“No, it’s my sisters. Help me, Lockington. Say you’ll do it—and help me.”
“Quiet now,” Bray said again, not wanting to hear more of the viscount’s preposterous ideas. “Save your strength.”
“Help me!” he cried louder.
“Tell him you’ll do it,” someone in the crowd mumbled.
“Give the man some peace,” another added.
Bray looked up at the swarm of troubled faces urging him to put the man at ease, but Bray made no reply to their pleas. Instead he demanded, “What’s taking so long to get the damn carriage here?”
“I hear it coming,” a man answered.
The viscount coughed and blood trickled from the side of his mouth. His dog whimpered again, and Prim’s bottom lip trembled. “You owe me, Lockington.”
“The hell I do,” Bray answered without thinking.
Wayebury’s eyelids fluttered. He pulled harder on Bray’s neckcloth, forcing his face even closer. “For my sisters—I can’t help them anymore. Tell me you’ll do it for them—so I can rest in peace. Marry—Louisa.”
Wayebury’s anguish was understandable, but his request was insane. They were friends, Bray supposed, but he couldn’t possibly owe the man a vow that would affect his whole life simply because of a foolish wager and an avoidable accident.
Wayebury cried out in pain again. “Help me! My time is done. Marry her,” he gurgled.
“Do it,” someone in the crowd said.
“Don’t make a dying man beg.”
“Show mercy!”
Over the escalating murmured anger, and the crowd demanding it, Bray said, “All right, Prim, all right. Should anything happen to you, I’ll marry your sister.”
The crowd went silent. Wayebury’s hand slipped off the ends of Bray’s neckcloth. The viscount’s eyes closed, and he whispered, “And my dog, Lockington. Take Saint, too.”
Chapter 2
Let me embrace thee, sour adversity,
For wise men say it is the wisest course.
—Henry VI, part 3,act 3, scene 1
Bray stood still as stone in his Mayfair town house, staring out the front window. It was only a couple of hours after the accident, but early morning sun had chased away the misty fog, making way for a bright blue sky. He had changed his soiled neckcloth, shirt, and waistcoat. He looked better but he still felt wretched.
How could Wayebury be gone? Damnation, he’d never watched a man die, and hoped he never had to again.
While Bray changed his clothing, his good friend Seaton had gone to the Heirs’ Club to find someone who knew where to reach Wayebury’s uncle.
“Would you like for me to pay a visit to the new viscount and inform him of Lord Wayebury’s death?” Seaton asked as Bray reached for his coat.
Hell yes,Bray thought, but said, “It’s my duty.”
He appreciated Seaton’s offer but couldn’t accept. John Aldrich Seaton had been his friend and conscience since Bray joined the Heirs’ Club. At sixty years of age, with a thinning mane of gray hair and swarthy skin, Seaton was the oldest member of the exclusive establishment who hadn’t come into his title. Seaton’s father, Viscount Fieldington, was still thriving at the ungodly age of eighty-seven. On the few occasions Seaton had been known to drink too much, he’d joke that his father would outlive him, his many grandsons, and his recently born great-grandson.
“What about Wayebury’s sister?” Seaton asked.
Bray rubbed his temples, willing his head to stop pounding. He’d already vowed never to drink so much again. “What about her?”
“You told him you would marry her.”
