“Are you aware that Cook quit just this morning?” Juliana spoke quietly. “There was hardly anything to make breakfast with this week. His wages had not even been paid inmonths. Months, Grandmama!”
Her Grandmama did not even blink. “How unfortunate,” she sniffed, as if they were conversing about some other householdand not their own.
“It is the responsibility of Kit to make sure the domestics are paid their wages,” she seethed. “Instead, he sends his sister on one fool’s errand after another and calls it doing business!”
There. She had done it. She had all but called her brother, the Baron Hawthorne, a useless man who had to rely on the womenfolk under his roof to keep up with his responsibilities.
“Ye gods, what is this clamor so early in the day?” a voice complained. “Can a gentleman not have some peace in his own residence?”
Kit walked in with his head in his hands, dressed in the same clothes he had worn when he left the townhouse just last night. Only then, his cravat had been done immaculately, and he at least bore some semblance of an aristocrat. Now, he looked as if the hackney that brought him home had dragged him through the streets of London. His hair was disheveled, his shirt stained, and his cravat missing. If he had come home with one or both his boots missing, she would not have been so surprised.
Dismay at her brother’s current state burned like acid in her gut, even as their Grandmama stood up to fret over this grown man who behaved like a child still. She wanted to scream at him, and yet, the urge to pull him into an embrace was stronger. She wanted to tell him to stop putting himself in danger before he got himself killed.
“Oh, my dear boy,” the dowager fussed. “How was your night?”
Kit shook his head and groaned. “Was just having a run of good fortune when the oddest thing happened.”
“Pray tell, what was so odd, brother dearest?”
Her grandmother shot her a quelling look, but Juliana was practically impervious to her disapproval at this stage.
She continued to glare at Kit, who strode into the room with all the grace of a drunken sailor. It seemed that Kit had once again spent the night deep in his cups, if his unbalanced gait was any indication. And then, not only had he spent funds that they did not possess on expensive wine and whatnot, he seemed to have lost more at cards as well.
Was there no end to the ways Kit could destroy what remained of their family’s reputation and fortune?
“And then, I lost it all to the most arrogant scoundrel I had ever had the misfortune to lay eyes on,” he continued to complain. “Of course, I exposed him for the cheat and blackguard that he was, and we came to blows. The next thing I knew, I woke up in Hyde Park.”
Their grandmother looked at him with pity and affection more suited to a boy of six or seven than to a grown man with no sense of duty. Juliana, however, had neither pity, affection, nor patience to spare after hearing all that.
How many times had Kit come in with that same story? Always starting the night off with unbelievable luck, but coming home with nothing to show for it. He should have realized by now that it was probably some trick the gambling dens were pulling on him to get him to bet more than he ought to.
“So, you were gambling and drinking yet again?” she told him, folding her arms over her chest as she glared at him. “Need I remind you that it was your propensity for cards and drinking that has brought us to this state?”
“Oh, hush now, Juliana! What do you know about how gentlemen conduct their business?” Grandmama chastised her. The older woman dabbed a handkerchief with faded embroidery on her grandson’s temple. “A little drinking and a few games are how men make connections.”
“And the bruises?” Juliana regarded her nonchalant grandmother with a raised eyebrow. “I suppose these so-called gentlemen come to blows for sport?”
“Naturally. Fisticuffs are a gentleman’s exercise.”
“How about sleeping in the Park for all thetonto see, then?”
Her grandmother simply beamed at her brother, while barely sparing Juliana a look. “Fresh air is good for the body, and a bit of sunshine does wonders for one’s complexion.”
Kit shot their grandmother a lopsided grin. “Thank you, Grandmama. You were always the one who understood me the best.”
“You silly man,” she laughed. “Now, go on up to your chambers. I shall have a bath drawn for you so you can rest properly.”
Who would draw the bath? There was hardly any staff left to fulfill such a task.
Juliana sighed. Give or take a few years, the only complexion Kit would sport would be that same sallow, jaundiced hue, all too common among men who liked wine a little too much. By then, their estate would have sunk much deeper into debt, dragged into the quagmire of her brother’s poor choices and her grandmama’s excessive coddling.
“By the way, Julie.”
She stiffened at the sound of her brother’s voice calling out to her.
“Do be a dear, my sister, and deliver that package for me,” he told her. “I need the payment for that delivery tonight. Have to keep those damned debt collectors from breathing down our necks.”
Juliana pressed her lips into a thin line. “Understood.”
