Yes. Good grief. He was Lord Orton. He was the head of the family. He was a man of six-and-twenty—as old now as his father had been on the day of Jack’s birth. Of all the things he was responsible for, Jack knew he was certainly responsible for himself. But—
But really,came his father’s voice, wry and amused.Didn’t you see this coming?
“No!” Jack kicked a tussock of grass, then coloured in embarrassment as two nearby nurserymaids startled, hastily hurrying their charges away. Devil take it… He attempted to clear the black scowl from his face and slacken his furious pace to a more sober walk.
How could he have seen it coming? It was Min. That odd little creature, half shy, half stubborn, head full of secret thoughts that were only sometimes revealed by the action of her clever fingers. Sketches of places and faces and all the things that’d caught her eye, drawn with a vivacity that left him wondering if he’d ever truly seen the world at all…
Perhaps that was it. He’d never seenher. Until now.
But no. Heknewher. He felt sure he knew her, as little as he’d ever appreciated it. The difference now was…her. Him. A man and a woman. That was very different from two clueless children. She’d grown up into a beautiful woman—
He stopped himself. Beautiful? Min? No…notfashionablybeautiful but…
God, she was enchanting. She was absolutely delightful. Those curls… To push a hand into that abundant softness… Hadn’t he—honestly, hadn’t he been wanting to do that for a very long time? Not just since yesterday, since that waltz, with the fullness of her figure in his arms, and some sweet, soft scent coming off her exposed skin, lips parted on a laugh, and the generous curve of—
George’s wife, he reminded himself, forcibly. She was to be George’s wife.
Oh God. Oh hell. What the devil could he do? Only pray that this Damascene conversion reversed as swiftly as it’d arrived.
And avoid her until then. Yes. That would be wise.
And, when he returned to his house and finally attended to his correspondence, it turned out to be unavoidable.
Mr Blatherstock stood up in surprise when Jack was shown into his office.
“Lord Orton, I would have come to you at your home—”
“Yes, yes,” agreed Jack, waving off the polite formality as he sat down before the man’s desk, “but now I’ve had…ah…time to read your letters, the matter seemed urgent, and the Lord knows you’ve wasted enough ofyourtime trying to track me down.”
Blatherstock was a sensible man and opted not to deny this or waste time on obsequence. He gave one small nod, moved smoothly to the cabinet in the corner, and poured Jack a drink.
“That bad is it?” said Jack as he took the glass.
Blatherstock smiled thinly and sat back down. “Bad, Lord Orton, but far from hopeless.”
“I still don’t understand how my finances have become so…alarming. I know the mining business was a disaster—not to speak ill of the dead, but Lansbury, thelateLansbury, I mean, might as well have picked my pocket for all the return I saw onthatinvestment.”
“I did advise it was extremely unlikely to—”
“Yes, yes. I know. But he was a friend of a friend.” He waved a hand. “You know how it is, a transaction between gentlemen, you can’t help but trust the other man—yououghtto be able to trust them, God damn it, or what good is anything?”
“Quite,” agreed Blatherstock politely. “If we lived in an ideal world.”
“I only drew on a small part of my principal.”
“Which is fortunate, but itdiddiminish the whole. As have the additional demands placed upon it recently.”
Heat flushed Jack’s neck, and he sipped his drink as though the burn of the liquor would detract from the burn of shame. It was unfortunate he’d spent the morning trying so hard to summon the spirit of his father. His ghost was uncomfortably present at Jack’s shoulder.
“Those gaming debts will not be repeated,” he told Mr Blatherstock.
“And the recent acquisition of several horses, the alterations to Orton House, the ah,fournew carriages you commissioned… The nine hundred pounds you withdrew last November was for the purchase of a racehorse, I believe?”
Damn Major Mellish, and Queensberry, and Leighton, and all of them. Jack should have known better than to get in with that sporting mad set. The excuse that everyone was doing it died unspoken on his lips.
“I can sell the horse.” Backing it to win certainly hadn’t done him any favours. “Sell several.” Though the thought made him grimace. “But…are things really so bad? I’d always believed that my fortune…well…that it was appropriate to my needs.”
“It is. Or rather, it was.”
