As there was no way of apologizing with the children present, he let her go. But she had barely gone ten feet when there was a commotion downstairs that stopped her in her tracks and brought him and the children up short.
“In the absence of her ladyship, then her blasted brother can compensate me!” Harry chilled at the unfamiliar voice coming from the front porch. The wordcompensatedragged him instantly back to his childhood, when all the debt collectors had queued angrily at their door. It also awoke Norbert, who began to bark before he flew off the bed to join the fray in the hall.
“Now see here!” Tom was equally incensed downstairs at the aggressive tone of the interloper. “You’ve no right to come barging here at this late hour when you know the master and mistress won’t be home for months!”
“I want paying, Tom, and I damn well want paying tonight!”
“Then you can come back and state your case politely to Harry during daylight hours, like a decent person!” By the sounds of wood being wrestled, Tom was attempting to shut the door on the interloper while holding back mad Norbert, and neither the debt collector nor the dog would have it. “There is nobody to receive you here tonight!”
“Oh yes there is! I saw her bloody brother with me own eyes notten minutes ago, riding home across the field in his fancy uniform! So he will see me now! I’m sick of being fobbed off by you and Ada when I’m owed!”
“You’ve got no proof that any money actuallyisowed!”
“Got no proof!” The stranger’s voice rose several octaves, and so did Norbert’s barking. “What’s this if it’s not proof! I’m not going until I get my money!”
As the children’s eyes had widened at the drama unfolding downstairs, and as Harry remembered only too well how frightening it was for a child to have to listen to a bailiff’s threats while powerless to do anything to stop them taking what they wanted, he rushed to the stairwell. If it spared them that same anxiety, then he would pay his sister’s debt whether there was proof she owed it or not. And despite bloody fuming at his blasted sister for racking up debt and ignoring it. Why the hell hadn’t Flora learned the same awful lessons from their financially incompetent parents as he had? Especially when she had been as terrified of it all as he had been back then. To put her own children through the same torment because she was a flighty disaster who couldn’t run a bath was beyond the pale!
He slowed before he took the stairs, as he was determined to keep the calm upper hand, no matter how chaotic the situation sounded. His sister might be up to her eyeballs in debt, but thanks to all the admiral’s hoarded money and Harry’s talent for investing it, he was as solvent as could be.
“What seems to be the problem, sir?” He would be polite and accommodating for the sake of the children, who were already quite scared enough, and he would make this go away no matter how much it cost. But when she came back, by Jove, Flora was getting both barrels!
At Harry’s approach, the interloper pointed at him with a quaking finger and raised his other fist high in the air. From it, dangling by the scruff of his neck, was a gangly puppy. “Look what your bloody dog did to mine!”
He recognized the man as a local farmer rather than a debt collector, and it did not take a genius to work out that the long-limbed and scruffy pup he was holding was the fruit of Norbert’s loins. The thing was Norbert all over, only in miniature. He had the same long snout, the same shaggy gray fur, and the same big brown eyes.
“People hereabouts pay good money for one of my sheepdogs and this cuckoo in the nest is eating me out of house and home!” The man took a pace forward and jabbed his pointed finger again. “I warned your bloody nephew to keep his dog away from my bitch, and I warned your sister too, but did they listen? Now I have to suffer the consequences. This dog would be worth a guinea if it had been born a collie like its mother and the rest of the litter, but nobody in their right mind is going to pay a farthing for a sheep dog who looks like this! You owe me a guinea, sir, for this runt, and at least five shillings for all the food he’s eaten since Bessie birthed him.”
A sum that didn’t add up at all. “So to be clear, Norbert impregnated Bessie, your sheep dog?”
“Yes.”
“Who then went on to have a litter of pups numbering…?” He paused to allow the disgruntled farmer to fill in the blank.
“Seven!”
“And the other six?”
“Came out perfect.”
“And… it’s just this one you require compensation for and not the whole litter?” Clearly the farmer was as thick as two short planks if he thought that those other six hadn’t been tainted by their enormousfather’s unruly lineage. They would all have a touch of Norbert about them, no matter how much they currently favored their mother. It might not be visible now, but it would be, and then God help their new and unsuspecting owners, as they would be in for a ride. Then would doubtless want their money back.
The farmer held out his hand. “One guinea and six shillings, if you please. I shan’t be leaving without it.” He planted his feet and glared. First at Harry and then at the giant, randy, barking Norbert beside him.
ChapterTWENTY-THREE
The captain turned to fetch the money and, spying them all watching from the stairs, smiled at his niece as cool as a cucumber, as if nothing untoward was the matter at all. “Kindly fetch one guinea and six shillings from my bedchamber, Marianne.”
She did as he asked and there was a long, awkward silence from everyone except the still-barking Norbert while they all waited for her to return with it. The captain checked the amount, then patted Marianne on the head as if she were the cleverest child on earth to have counted it right the first time, and with another breezy smile, he then counted the coins into the man’s outstretched hand. Purposefully slow to vex him while Ada, who had joined them from the kitchen, gripped her spoon as if she fully intended to use it if the intruder dared speak again.
As the last coin was transferred, he folded the farmer’s fingers over them and did not let go. “Can we agree now that the full debt has been paid?” Georgie could not quite fathom what he did, but something about his demeanor had changed. He was taller, somehow. Morearrogant and completely in control. So hard-boiled and imposing, she barely recognized him.
“It has, sir.”
“And can we also agree that coming to a house at nightfall, raising merry hell, and scaring my nieces and nephew at bedtime is both rude and unnecessary when we could have had a polite conversation first thing—like decent men? We are neighbors, after all.”
“Well… er…” Flummoxed at being pulled up and more flummoxed that the captain’s hand still held his fist like a vise. “I… er…”
“I shall take that as a yes.” The captain’s smile was icy. Menacing, even. “Kindly apologize to them all for causing such an abhorrent scene.”
