“All right.”
“Louisa won’t marry you. Let’s find a way out of this that will cause the least stir.”
“It may already be too late for that.”
Fletcher nodded. “The blame for which I put entirely on you.”
Fletcher turned on his heel and walked toward the door. He grabbed Lark by the collar on the way.
“Say good-bye to your little toy, Anthony,” Lark said as he was being dragged away.
“Enchantée, monsieur,” said Anthony. “But, alas, my darling friend has insisted we leave. Rotherfeld is available again, but I’ve heard he has a small member, so proceed accordingly.”
As they walked outside, Lark said, “You’ve heard no such thing.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The thing you said about Rotherfeld.”
“About his small member? No, I made that up. But would it really be so bad if that rumor spread?”
“I hope it spreads like a persistent rash,” said Fletcher.
Chapter Twenty
Fletcher hoped that, when his butler announced that the Duke of Rotherfeld had come to call, Rotherfeld had come to his senses.
Alas.
Fletcher had been holed up in his office for most of the morning with Richard Cox, a capable accountant and business manager who had taken over the management of the Greystone estate and business holdings after the previous marquess’s death. He met with Fletcher regularly to make reports and ask for final decisions. Fletcher had sold a few of the estate’s holdings, and Mr. Cox informed him that he did have enough on-hand to buy out Rotherfeld’s share in the Shropshire sheep farm—“Saythatfive times fast!” Fletcher had joked, but Mr. Cox did not appear to appreciate this—but Mr. Cox had also been digging into Anthony’s idea for how to thwart Rotherfeld financially, and also found it sound.
But now Rotherfeld stood in Fletcher’s study and said, “I heard what you said last night, but I’m not interested.”
“You came all this way to say you’re not interested?” said Fletcher, not believing him. There was no reason to have come all the way to Fletcher’s house if the answer was a flat no. Fletcher figured Rotherfeld had come to negotiate.
“The reputational damage—”
Fletcher wanted to grab Rotherfeld by the embroidered lapels of his very expensive jacket. “Let me put this more plainly,” Fletcher said. “You think this is a negotiation, but it is not. You will not be marrying Louisa. You can come to the church if you like, but she’ll refuse you, or not show up at the church at all. You can threaten Lord Petty if you like, but I’llbuy Petty out of his share of the farm, and then you will have to do business with me. And let me warn you, I may seem mild-mannered, but I am willing to fight to the ends of the Earth for the people I love. And I love Louisa. So if you carry on with the wedding, or if you touch so much as a hair on her head, I will make you regret it.”
Mr. Cox sat at the desk and made atsksound. Fletcher didn’t care for his judgment. He needed Rotherfeld to understand he was opposing the wrong man, and that Fletcher’s patience for this nonsense had run out.
Rotherfeld’s face paled.
“The way I see it,” Fletcher went on, “you can end the engagement quietly now, we’ll all agree that things just didn’t work out, and Louisa and I will marry in a small ceremony at the end of the season. We won’t call attention to it, people will forget it ever happened. But if you persist in this delusion that Louisa is somehow the answer to your problems and not a flesh-and-blood woman with her own wants and desires, then I will ensure myself that your humiliation is maximal.”
This seemed to, finally, chasten Rotherfeld. “What do you plan to do?”
Fletcher shrugged. “Not me. Louisa plans to jilt you. Would you really like for that to happen in front of rows of society’s finest, sitting in pews in a church?”
Rotherfeld frowned.
“You forget also,” Fletcher said, “that I know your secrets. I saw you at your club. I don’t know if you are still having an affair with Lieutenant Hanley, but I know you did. There were several prominent witnesses to your trying to woo young Epperson. I am not above having a friend leak something to the scandal sheets. You want to talk about reputational damage?What will happen to you if thetonfinds out Louisa jilted you because you’re a sodomite? What would happen if I told Lord Petty? If I told the wholeton?”
Fletcher hadn’t intended to go so hard. He hadn’t intended to be brutal. But he was tired of having this debate with Rotherfeld. He wanted it to be made clear that Fletcher had all the cards here.
Rotherfeld didn’t say anything. He stared at the ground. He seemed to be thinking.
“Have you nothing to say?” Fletcher asked.
