The Bargain Bride (30 page)

“That's what I thought, but it won't wash. I still owe the money. But maybe you could talk to him, get me some more time.” His expression brightened. “That's the ticket. He'll listen to you.”

Not about money, Penny knew. She told Nicky, “West is working so hard to earn a living, to bring his estate back into profitability. He will be appalled that you have gambled any of it away. Besides, his accounts will be empty after the fire and the rebuilding. So no, I won't talk to him on your behalf. You'll have to do it yourself. After all, you got yourself into this mess, and he is your brother.”

Nicky looked at her sideways. “No, he's your brother. Didn't I tell you? It was Nigel Entwhistle who took me to the brothel. Said we were family and all that, so we had to look out for each other.” He gave a grim, humor-less laugh. “He's the one who holds my vouchers.”

Penny shoved him off the narrow bench so she could collapse into it. Nigel? Nigel had swindled a fortune from Nicky, with drugged wine, marked cards, confederates in a house of convenience? Yes, she could well believe it all.

“How . . . how did you get away?”

Nicky looked like he was about to shoot the cat again, on her new Turkey runner.

“Don't you dare,” she managed to say, despite her own roiled innards.

He swallowed hard and admitted, “I gave your name. Your father's, that is.”

Everyone knew Sir Gaspar Goldwaite was wealthy beyond measure. Everyone who knew him personally knew he'd never pay the wages of Nicky's sins. What, pull a puling member of the useless aristocracy out of the River Tick? Finance a losing lordling who gambled above his means? Penny could just hear him saying that no businessman ever wagered more than he could afford to lose, only the empty-headed toffs. He never mentioned all the investors who went bankrupt when ships went down, trading ventures failed, new inventions exploded.

No, her father would never pay Nicky's debt. Sir Gaspar had already sent his wife's son off to India. He would not throw good money after bad. Nor would he force Nigel to rip up the suspect gaming vowels, not when that meant upsetting his wife, Constance, the maggot's doting mother.

Sir Gaspar wouldn't. West couldn't. That left only one choice for Penny. “I will handle this.”

“You will?” From his tone of voice, either Nicky did not believe she would try, or else he did not believe she could succeed.

“Yes, I will.” She repeated the words to herself for confidence, adding that she'd find decent husbands for the girls, too. Then she intended to wash her hands of all of them, her father and his second family, the same as they had turned their backs on her until she proved useful. Penny was not about to let Nicky take his dilemma to West, not when her husband had all those other problems, and problems using his wife's money. Furthermore, what kind of start to a marriage was this, with Penny's connection—although they shared no blood between them, thank goodness—chousing West's brother out of a fortune? He'd hold her responsible. Heavens, she
felt
responsible.

Parker came back then, surprised to see Nicky, horrified at his condition. Penny put Nicky in the butler's competent hands, which meant Mrs. Parker's coddling. She did issue firm orders not to let Nicky out of his room until the night of the ball, before he got into more trouble.

When they left, she stayed on the bench, wondering just how she was going to handle this mess, now that she had sworn to do so. Then she got up and walked out to the waiting coach, dismissing the footman who would have accompanied her on her errands.

“No, I have changed my mind. I am only going to my father's house. I do not need an escort.”

A gun, perhaps, but not a witness.

 

West checked the pistol tucked into his waistband as he rode into one more livery stable, a far distance from Westfield. How the deuce was he going to handle this, he asked himself, if no one here had leased Fred Nesbitt a horse, or hired him, or knew of his friends? He was almost out of places to make inquiries, and almost out of time, without finding a trace of the malcontent with the matches. Nesbitt might have fled the country. Or he might be waiting nearby for an opportunity to inflict more harm.

West could not leave his horses unprotected. They were his future, the legacy he wanted to leave to his son beyond a title, a mortgaged estate, and a leaking roof. They were proof of his own effort, not something he'd fallen into by a chance of birth and death, and they were a source of his pride, too, he admitted to himself. Without the stud farm and training fields, he was Penny's dependent, nothing else.

He could not hire enough guards to watch his own dependents, spread throughout his acres, to say nothing of McAlbee in the cottage where he was convalescing. On the other hand, he could not miss Penny's ball, either. He had given his solemn word to be there, at her side, to help find husbands for her stepsisters. The future of his own marriage—and the heir he hoped to beget—hung on that vow. Pride, trust, and honor were all tied in a knot, in his head, in his heart. Penny would never forgive him for letting her down, again. He'd never forgive himself for losing her love, again.

One more day—that was all he could spare before riding for London. He raced from posting house to public house to private stables, until he finally found out that Nesbitt had a relative in the vicinity.

Ah, thank goodness for sisters.

—By Arrangement,
a chronicle of arranged marriages, by G. E. Felber

 

 

 

“
A
h, thank goodness for stepsisters,” Nigel said, coming down the stairs. “I was wondering how long before you arrived on my doorstep.”

Penny handed her parasol to the waiting butler, then followed Nigel to the Gold Parlor, where they could be private.

Once the door was shut behind the poker-backed butler, Penny turned on Nigel, not taking the seat he indicated, but standing across from him, her arms folded across her chest, her chin raised. “This is not your doorstep, sir. It is my father's, and shabby gratitude you have shown for his generosity.”

Nigel sneered, leaning against the mantel. “What, I should grovel at your father's feet for the crumbs he throws my way? Lud knows he can afford more.”

“I meant you should not sully his house with your shady dealings, nor drag his name through the murky paths of your underhanded iniquities and underworld associates. You will blight your sisters' chances of finding proper suitors, and send your mother to an early grave. To say nothing of the effects your dastardly actions will have on my new relations.”

Nigel did not pretend to misunderstand. “I pulled the boy out of a bar fight before his skull was bashed, and I kept him out of the Watch's hands. I even found a safe place for him to sober up, instead of leaving him on a street corner where he'd be prey to every yegg and yahoo in Seven Dials.”

Penny shuddered to think what could have happened to Nicky. Then she trembled with rage, to think how West's brother got to that neighborhood in the first place. “You led him there, and then you cheated him out of a fortune.”

Nigel studied his manicured fingers. “Those are harsh words, sister.”

“That is Lady Westfield to you, sirrah.”

He curled his lip again. “You are mighty hoity-toity for a wench who's come to ask a favor.”

“What favor? That you forgive Nicky's debts? I know you better than that. I would not demean myself by asking.”

“That cloak of aristocratic disdain does not become you, our new viscountess. But you always were a proud one, weren't you?”

Penny did not answer; she merely raised one eyebrow.

“Very well, let us not waste one another's time now that we have come to an understanding. Did you bring the cash?”

“Oh no, you mistake my presence, Nigel. I will not pay a farthing. I came to remind you that Nicky is not of age, so his debts are invalid. Contracts with a minor will not hold up in a court of law.”

He smiled, but the good humor did not reach his watery blue eyes. They reminded Penny of a puddle reflecting a sunny sky. Pretty, but mud for all that, and without the sun's warmth. His words reinforced her opinion: “Ah, but what of the court of public opinion? I doubt Master Nicholas would like to be known as a man who reneged on his gaming obligations. Play and pay, that is the gentleman's credo, you know. They cherish their honor and all that rot.”

“You cannot know anything of honor. Or a gentleman's code, no matter from which elevated family tree you fell. Or got pushed.”

His smile wavered at the insult. “But I have studied what the swells think makes a gentleman . . . one like your husband, for instance. I could always go to Westfield for the brass.”

Penny nodded in acknowledgment of this expected ploy. She'd known she would not get off that easily, not once she realized Nicky's ruin was a carefully orchestrated plot. Nigel had indeed studied his victims well, knowing she would do anything to avoid involving West. Nigel had even been waiting for her, the wily cur.

“As you surmised, I would be embarrassed to have my husband discover that I was related to such a bloodsuck ing leech,” she said, “no matter how tenuous the connection. He warned me you were bad
ton,
but I doubt he knew quite how low you could stoop.”

“Ah, but we lowly leeches need sustenance, too.”

“Let me see the chits.”

He had them ready. “I paid off Ma Johnstone, too. Much tidier to have one debtor, don't you know.”

“I know the charges have to be fraudulent, and I know that you and the female are in collusion.”

“In that case I suppose I should give Ma's bills back to her and let her send the Butcher to collect from your brother-in-law.”

“The Butcher?”

“That's what they call her bodyguard, Boyd. He used to be called Two-Fist Finnegal when he made his living prizefighting, before he pulled a knife on a better boxer. Few people argue about Ma's prices when Boyd comes calling.”

Penny put that bill on the bottom of the pile.

Nigel was going on, trying to frighten her, Penny knew. “If you do not believe the reckoning from the tavern, I could deliver the complaints and charges stemming from the brawl to the Watch. They might decide to make an example of your tender sprig, to keep the rowdy boys out of the stews. I could give them the names of your precious Nicky's friends, too. Of course, they would think that Westmoreland peached on them, which is yet another breach in that tedious wall of rectitude your gentlemen cherish.”

Another bill went to the bottom of the stack in Penny's hands. The next were so-called gaming vowels, IOUs made out to Nigel, with Nicky's initials scrawled across them. His handwriting was as poor as his judgment, but that was an issue for another day. “No doubt you got him to sign while he was too drunk or drugged to know better. Unless you've turned to forgery in addition to your other crimes.”

“Why should I? Westmoreland is a gambler, and not a very good one. Everyone knows that.”

Nigel was a gambler, too, only now he was gambling she could not prove the signatures on the vouchers were false. For that matter, he was betting that she would not go to West, her father, or the authorities. And he'd win the wager, the blackguard.

He'd won before she left home. Penny took her checkbook from her reticule. “I will pay you five hundred pounds for the lot, merely to be rid of you. In return, you will leave Nicky and his friends alone. You'll find some other gullible lambs to fleece.”

“Tsk. I wish I could, out of family feeling if nothing else. Unfortunately I have debts of my own, you know. The chaps I owe are a lot less easy to deal with than I am. They make the Butcher look like a nursemaid.”

“Very well. It is worth a thousand pounds to be rid of you once and for all. I expect you to stay away from me or my family in the future. In fact, I insist upon it, or else I shall go to the authorities. No, if I hear of you playing off your tricks with Nicky, I shall hire a bigger, meaner brute than any you know. Three of them. You won't be able to walk near an alley without looking over your shoulder.” She wished she'd thought of that before.

Nigel clucked his tongue and shook his head. “So bloodthirsty, my dear. You see me quaking in my boots. Imagine the scandal if your ruffians lost and named you as their employer. You see, I am very good with a knife myself.” He might not take her threats seriously, but he did take her check.

Penny tucked the gaming chits and the bills into her reticule, along with the checkbook. “Then our business is complete.”

“I wish I could say it is, my dear. I do wish I could.”

Penny looked up from the drawstrings she was tying. “What do you mean? If you find other markers with Nicky's name, I shall not pay them.”

“What I mean is that I can afford the style of life I wish, thanks to you and your buffle-headed brother-in-law, but only for a short while, a very short while after I pay my most immediate and dangerous creditors. I would have been set for life if you'd married me, the way I wished.”

“I never would have agreed to that.”

He shrugged. “Which is why you will have to make me an allowance.”

Penny laughed, striding toward the door. “My father won't. Why should I do such a preposterous thing?”

“Because you have the blunt I need, and I will ruin you, else.”