But Lord Cotereigh had proved useful in other ways too. It turned out he took an active role in managing his own business affairs and was able to advise her on money matters—the committee funds would need to be managed and controlled, perhaps invested. He recommended accountants, bankers, funds, solicitors. Her aunt had her own man of business, but he was elderly, baffled and dismayed by this new task. Lord Cotereigh’s experienced advice had been very useful.
It was easiest if she didn’t question why he was so helpful. The wager, of course! It was easiest if she forgot how he’d trapped her hand in his and stroked her skin into fire. The earl’s heir had no good use for an aging widow, a country parson’s daughter. And she…she had no room in her heart. There was no placeto put all those smiles or the effect of those dark eyes. They cluttered her skin, distracting and futile.
“Well, Tom,” said Lord Cotereigh. “What does it say?”
The boy’s hand clenched on the book. “Don’t rush me.”
He’d taken to numbers far easier than letters. He could already read those, even if he couldn’t write them. And he could do sums in his head with a speed astonishing in a boy who’d never been taught.
“He has a mechanical brain,” Lord Cotereigh had said to her one day, when they were together at her aunt’s house. “An engineer’s brain.”
The clock on her aunt’s mantel had just chimed the hour. Lord Cotereigh had long since told her the story of that near-fatal day—Tom’s excuse,‘I like clocks’reducing him to laughter as he told it. He’d brought the boy a set of clockmaker’s tools—tiny tweezers and sharp, poky bits of metal that, as she’d dryly pointed out, would make excellent lockpicks—and had plans to apprentice him to a clockmaker. But he’d need to be able to read and write a little for that.
“Tom is doing very well,” she said now, giving Lord Cotereigh a prim schoolteacher look. “He is working hard. Unlike some people, who have neglected their important letters of business.”
He glanced over at the desk with a grin. “My bootmaker can probably wait another day for instructions.”
“But can the rest of London? We’re all in suspense, my lord. Will it be one set of tassels on your Hessians, or two?”
“Two?” He was disgusted. “What kind of a popinjay do you take me for?”
“Oh, merely a dan—”
“If you say dandy…” He grinned down at her, about ready to clap a hand over her mouth. “I’ll make you regret it.”
Tom threw his hands up. “For gawd’s sake! How’s a fellow meant to concentrate round ’ere?”
Across the room, her aunt’s knitting needles kept clacking. But she watched it all. And never said a word.
At least one of them was wise.
Lord Cotereigh went back to his seat, smiling at the both of them, triumphant, not retreating.
“Shall I tell you where I found young Tom this morning? In my father’s room, fleecing the old man at cards.”
Madelaine kept her smile light, echoing his, though she was surprised. It was the first time he’d mentioned his father since that fraught afternoon she’d met him while looking for the boy. She hadn’t thought he could talk of the man with such humour.
“I was winning fair and square!” protested Tom.
“He had a whole pile of silver at his elbow,” Lord Cotereigh informed her, eyes glinting as though they, too, possessed silver coins in their depths, bright and sparkling.
“His lordship likes it! I been playing him for days, and he always says I should come back!”
“Rich as Croesus he’ll be soon. The whole wealth of the Thornes in his pockets before I ever get a chance to inherit it.”
“We only play for shillings! And it started off with pennies. That’s how I staked him, to start.” Tom’s indignation shifted to satisfied pride. “With those eighteen pennies I won off you. And I went down to two before I got the hang of the game, which fair made me sweat, I tell you. Took me a few rounds to learn the rules.”
“The boy, you see,” Lord Cotereigh still addressed her, “had never played piquet before. Apparently it took him…oh…atleastan hour to master it.”
“It’s all them funny French words.” Tom wrinkled his nose. “Dunno why they can’t just call a thing what it is.”
“Presumably, the French believe they are.”
“I’d have played hazard with the old man, but I don’t have no dice.”
Madelaine suppressed a laugh. “Address him properly, Tom.”
“His old lordship, then.”
