“I brought you to my home to heal.” He guided her back into the bed and pulled the coverlet over her form. “I won’t have you insulting my hospitality by leaving too early.”
“If you put it that way,” she murmured. She sensed no threat from him. No reason why she had to leave the soft sheets and fine attentions of a grand house. Not yet in any case. “If it makes you ‘appy, me lord, I s’pose the least I could do is stay a bit longer.”
“Your condescension knows no bounds.” He brushed a strand of her hair off her cheek.
The caress was gentle, one a parent might give to a beloved child, and unbidden tears burned her eyes.
She turned her head so he wouldn’t see them.
He was a stranger, one showing a bit of kindness. That shouldn’t be something that made her want to weep.
She rolled onto her shoulder, giving Summerset her back. It had been a trying day. A couple hours sleep and she’d be back in her usual spirits.
The door eased closed behind her, and Netta let herself relax into blessed sleep.
Chapter Four
John stopped at the bottom of the stairs, looking back in the direction of Netta’s room. “Did you find him?” he asked the man lurking in the shadows.
“Yes.” Wilberforce separated from the wall and shuffled towards him.
“Has the message been sent?”
Wil nodded. “Lord Devlin won’t be hurting children any time soon.” His gaze flicked up the stairs. “Or at least what he believes to be children. He’ll be limping as badly as me for the next few months until he recovers.”
“Who did you take with you?” Over his years as a spy, John had developed a network of men who were willing to dirty their hands for the right amount of blunt. Or if the fancy took them. And delivering a punishment to a man who would stab a woman or child would strike many of their fancies.
John tapped the balustrade. He wished he could have joined them. Hearing Devlin squeal like the pig he was would have been gratifying.
“I took no one. I handled him on my own.”
“Wil.” John pressed his lips together. He’d known the man since they were both children. Such foolishness shouldn’t have surprised him.
Wil neatly changed the subject, nodding to the drawing room. “Your brother seems in high dudgeon. Or more so than usual. Go talk with him.”
“And now you give me orders in my own house.” John arched an eyebrow. “We truly need to discuss the finer points of the terms ‘master’ and ‘servant’.”
Wil snorted. “Go on. And don’t be too hard on him. Brothers shouldn’t fight so.”
John flipped his hand at Wil in a dismissive gesture and turned for his drawing room. He wasn’t the brother that needed the lecture.
Robert sat in the seat below the window, his elbows propped on his knees, his face buried in his hands. He lifted his head when John shut the door.
“I’ve bungled it up.” His brother’s eyes were rimmed red. His scars seemed to stand more to attention against the pallor of his skin.
“Of course you have.” John circled behind his desk and dropped in his chair. His brother could never pay him a call to say he’d invented a new method to improve their harvest, or found employment, or even found a woman. No, the only time John saw him was when Robert needed his help. “What have you done this time?”
Robert laced his fingers together, his knuckles going white. “I lost the deed to Crowhaven.”
John’s heart stopped. “Repeat that.”
“Crowhaven. It’s gone.” Robert shot to his feet and paced the room. “I should have won. The dice were going my way all night.”
John pressed his palms flat to his desk, the wood cool beneath his heated skin. Slowly, he pushed himself to standing. “Do you mean to tell me that you gambled your estate away in a game of hazard?” His chest heaved with his rapid breaths. His mouth went bone dry. “Your home that was left to you from our father’s mother? The property that contains England’s only known supply of chromite? That’s what you lost?”
Robert clenched his hands in front of his chest. “I had him, John. He threw a main of nine. The odds were in my favor. He bid twenty thousand pounds, and all I had was—”
“Everything.” John’s legs crumpled and his arse hit the chair hard. “Crowhaven was everything to the Summerset estate. The source of all our wealth.” Dark circles danced in his vision, and he blinked. “We’re ruined.”
