ES, A STOOL WILL DO NICELY,” JOCELYN SAIDwith a careless wave of his hand to the servant who had asked.
It would do more than nicely. He had come to White’s Club in his town carriage rather than riding, but he really ought to have used his crutches after descending instead of just a stout cane. His boot was pressing uncomfortably against his still-tender right calf. If he was not careful he was going to be compelled to have the boot cut off again when he returned home. He had already lost his favorite pair that way the day of the duel.
“And fetch me the morning papers too,” he instructed the servant, lifting his leg onto the stool without any outer appearance of effort but with a grateful inward sigh.
He had left the house early so that he would not have to encounterherbefore leaving, and she was herself an early riser. He picked up theMorning Postand scanned the front page, scowling as he did so. What the devil was he about, escaping early from his own home so that he could postpone coming face-to-face with a servant?
He was not sure which of two facts he was most ashamed of—if shame was the right word. Embarrassment might be more accurate. But neither was an emotion with which he had much recent acquaintance.
She had caught him playing the pianoforte. Playing one of his own compositions. And he had kissed her. Damnation, but he had been alone and inactive for too long and had broken one of his cardinal rules and had sunk to a new low in his own esteem. If his leg had not been aching enough to distract him, he probably would have laid her on the floor and availed himself of the treasure that had lain beneath the flimsy barrier of her nightgown. She would not have stopped him, the silly innocent.
“Tresham? By God, it is! How are you, old chap?”
Jocelyn was happy to lower his newspaper, which he had not been reading anyway, in order to greet acquaintances, who were beginning to arrive for their morning gossip and perusal of the papers.
“Hale, hearty, and hopping along at roughly my usual speed,” he replied.
The next several minutes were taken up with cheerful greetings and jocular witticisms about the Duke of Tresham’s leg and the elegant stool on which it reclined and the stout cane propped beside his chair.
“We were beginning to think you were enjoying playing court at Dudley House, Tresh,” Viscount Kimble said, “and were going to settle to it for life.”
“With the delectable Miss Ingleby to minister to your needs,” Baron Pottier added. “You are wearing your boots again, Tresham?”
“Would I come to White’s in my dancing slippers?” Jocelyn raised his eyebrows.
But Sir Isaac Wallman had picked up on an interesting detail. “The delectable Miss Ingleby?” he said. “The nurse? The one who screamed during the duel? Ho, Tresham, you rogue. Now how exactly has she been ministering to your needs?”
Jocelyn raised his quizzing glass and regarded the little dandy through it, looking him over slowly from head to toe.
“Tell me, Wallman,” he said in his most bored accents, “at what ungodly hour of the night did you have to rise to give your valet time to create that artistry with your neckcloth?” It would have been overelaborate even for the grandest of grand balls. Though maybe not for a soiree with the Regent, that prince of dandies.
“It took him a full hour,” Sir Isaac replied with some pride, instantly distracted. “And he ruined eight neckcloths before he got it right with this one.”
Jocelyn lowered his glass while Viscount Kimble snorted derisively.
The pleasantries over with, the conversation moved to the London-to-Brighton curricle race set for two days hence and to the somewhat reclusive presence in London of the Earl of Durbury, who had come to search for his son’s murderess. It was a major disappointment to several of the gentlemen present that the earl was not appearing everywhere in order to regale a boredtonwith the macabre details.
Sidney Jardine, who had been elevated to the position of heir to an earldom on the accession of his father to the title a year or so before, had never been popular with his peers. Jocelyn’s only dealings with him had come during atonball a couple of years before when Jardine, in his grace’s hearing, had made a coarse remark fully intended for the ears of a young lady and her mama, who had both declined his invitation to the former to dance. Jocelyn had invited the man to stroll with him on the terrace beyond the ballroom.
There he had instructed Jardine pleasantly enough to take himself off home without further ado or to hell if he preferred unless he chose to stay and have his mouth washed with soap. And when a furiously bristling Jardine had tried to issue a challenge, Jocelyn had raised his quizzing glass to his eye and informed his would-be adversary that it was an immutable rule with him to duel only with gentlemen.
“I am of the school of thought,” he said now, “that Lady Sara Illingsworth should be congratulated rather than censured. If she is wise, though, she will have removed herself far from London by now.”
“She did not go by stage, though, Tresh,” Viscount Kimble said. “I have heard that the Runners have done a thorough investigation. No one of her description has been traveling on any one of them.”
“She has learned wisdom since her arrival here, then,” Jocelyn said. “Good for her. I daresay she was provoked. Why else would any young lady bash a gentleman over the head?”
“You should know, Tresham,” Sir Isaac said with a titter, and won for himself another steady perusal through the ducal quizzing glass.
“Where is Ferdinand stabling his new horses?” Jocelyn asked of the group at large, though he was still looking at an enlarged and visibly uncomfortable Sir Isaac. “And where does he exercise them? I daresay he is busy preparing them for the race. I had better get over there and see if he is like to murder himself on Friday. He was never the world’s most skilled judge of horseflesh.”
“I’ll come with you, Tresh,” Viscount Kimble offered as Jocelyn lowered his foot from the stool and turned to grasp his cane. “Do you need any assistance?”
“Come within three feet of me at your peril!” Jocelyn growled while he hoisted himself upright as gracefully as he was able and gritted his teeth at the needle-sharp pain that shot up his right leg. “And I don’t need your escort, Kimble. I came in the carriage.”
It was an admission that aroused a fresh burst of amusement and witticisms from his acquaintances, of course.
Jane would give him a royal scolding for this when he got home, Jocelyn thought, and was instantly annoyed at himself for even thinking of home.
