The door of their suite closed behind him seconds later.
Chapter Seven
Money and a musket: there wasn’t much a man couldn’t accomplish if he was good with both.
Magnus was. He’d applied everything he’d learned and observed by growing up in a squire’s household and by rising through the ranks of the army. By the end of the war, clever, fortunate investments had made him a man of consequential wealth and property.
And what he’d told Alexandra the day he’d freed her bonnet ribbon was true: he never judged people. Judging limited one’s tactical options.
But he noticed nearly every detail about them.
He’d met her father, Viscount Bellamy, at White’s some years ago. A man of great charm and fine looks, his interests were far ranging, and he was amusing company when he got to talking. And while his penchant for impulsive, risky investments was at odds with his expensive proclivities—food, wine, horses, lavishly entertaining wealthy friends—Bellamy never postured, or tried to impress or challenge him when they met, unlike many aristocrats. He seemed entirely comfortable with who he was, and Brightwall always respected that sort of man. When he was invited to Bellamy’s house party at his legendarily lovely country estate, he’d decided to make it his last stop in England before he left for a diplomatic assignment in Spain.
And there he’d met his daughter.
He noticed how the eyes of every man present at Bellamy’s house party unconsciously tracked Alexandra when she was near, the way one would watch a bird, or a butterfly, for that fleeting feeling of weightlessness a beautiful, graceful thing brings.
He noted in particular the heat and yearning in the eyes of younger men, most of whom possessed pedigrees and fortunes.
He saw the fraying edges of the Bellamys’ gentility in the unkempt far reaches of the garden, the worn edges of carpets and the odd bedraggled hem on a curtain, in an un-dusted windowsill. He knew staff was the first to be peeled away when financial disaster loomed.
He saw the purple shadows of sleeplessness, the drawn worry, beneath Lord Bellamy’s eyes.
And because Magnus’s very presence inspired both confidence and confidences, he learned of Bellamy’s concerns about his recalcitrant son, and his sickly younger daughter, and he soon learned exactly how much money Bellamy owed creditors. The amount gave Brightwall pause.
And because many lavish dinners, outings, and gatherings were arranged during his visit, he’d had plenty of opportunities to witness both the affection and the tension between all the Bellamys,and how Alexandra was consistently the family balm. The fulcrum around which their family turned.
He was reasonably certain Alexandra would do just about anything for her family.
And even while those yearning, rich young men were constrained by the need for their fathers’ approval before they married, there might be one in the pack capable of impulse.
Time was of the essence.
Above all, Magnus knew Bellamy was desperate.
Every brilliant wager carries a risk equal to the reward. And Brightwall had nothing if not nerve.
One afternoon, he’d requested a meeting with Bellamy. Sitting across from him in the man’s cozy library, brandies in hand, the gilt titles of leather-bound books winking from the wall-high bookcases, Brightwall calmly explained to the viscount that he would pay the entirety of his debt at once, as well as settle a sum of five thousand pounds on him.
“With the stipulation that your daughter Alexandra and I wed before I leave for Spain.”
The silence that greeted this seemed endless. He’d clearly shocked Bellamy nearly witless.
Magnus had simply waited, outwardly impassive. He remembered, however, how he could feel his own pulse rushing beneath the thumb he’d pressed to it.
Finally, Bellamy cleared his throat. “Well. Colonel... it is... this is a great and unexpectedhonor. Does she know that you would... how you... that you...” Bellamy’s voice was frayed. His complexion stark white.
Magnus merely said, “I am confident we have developed a rapport during our admittedly short acquaintance, and I believe she will be a credit to me in my life as a diplomat.”
Lord Bellamy stared at him. And Magnus saw what he’d seen before in the eyes of men: a stunned realization that he had failed to fully estimate the character of the man in front of him. The uncomfortable comprehension that so many things said about Colonel Brightwall were, in fact, true: He might possess a certain charm. But he was also, indeed, cold. And ruthless.
There passed over Bellamy’s face a swift spasm of fury, no doubt at the realization that he, a viscount, had been played into a corner by a man who’d begun life in a potato sack. But it was likely more a reflex born of some ancient, hereditary sense of entitlement that flowed through his veins. Bellamy was, at heart, a decent man.
Magnus wasn’t without sympathy. But Bellamy would recover. He was certain the viscount hadn’t the fortitude or discipline required to hold a grudge, or to endure long stretches of unpleasantness. He was an intelligent, albeit currently a financially flailing, man who had just been handed a miraculous and quite respectable solution to all of his problems.
“The offer expires in one week,” he told Bellamy calmly.
But some of the color was already beginning to return to Lord Bellamy’s face.
