Chapter Thirteen
Tensions eased as they sipped tea and ate, the duke eyeing Frankie and Reynard eyeing the duke. More than once she tried to start a conversation. Eventually she found a topic of mutual interest.
“The duke has acquired a house,” she said to Reynard, who glanced at her coolly. “Where was it again, Your Grace?”
“Kensington Square,” the duke said with a smile.
“The same square that Sir Marion Tutty lives on,” she added.
“The same house, I believe,” Reynard said, causing her to set her cup down with a clack.
“What does that mean?” She frowned.
“It means Sir Marion has sold his house to me.” Ottenberg spoke up with a hint of purpose in his expression.
“So, the Tuttys have moved?” she asked, feeling the tension rising sharply between the men and having no idea why the duke’s buying Tutty’s house would cause it. Clearly, there was more to the story.
Yet another damned secret.
“Not yet. Maybe someday. For now, I am enjoying Sir Marion’s hospitality while he enjoys mine.”
Treacherous undercurrents were rising here. Clearly, Reynard and the duke didn’t like each other. One step in the wrong direction could send the encounter into dangerous territory, and Reynard had already fought one duel this month.
At that moment, the door opened and Sarah breezed in with a stack of hatboxes bearing the name of one of the premier milliners in London. Frankie swallowed hard, forcing a smile for her sister.
“There you are. And, my goodness, you’ve bought up every hat in the shop!” Frankie’s short laugh sounded brittle in her own ears. The men rose along with her. “You must excuse us, gentlemen. It is later than I realized and we must be home soon. We have guests coming for dinner.”
“And who is this divine creature?” the duke said in sultry tones, his gaze fastened on Sarah’s flushed face and sparkling eyes.
“My sister, Your Grace. Sarah Bumgarten.” She quickly donned her gloves and gathered her parasol and purse. Before she could walk around the table to collect her sister, the duke had Sarah’s hand in his and was clicking his heels. He delivered a charming kiss as Sarah delivered a charming curtsey.
“How wonderful to meet such a fresh young beauty. An unexpected pleasure, Fräulein Sarah.”
Frankie expected a giggle from Sarah at the courtly address, but a quick glance at Frankie’s tense face and Reynard’s icy control must have warned Sarah that this was not the time to be flippant or girlish.
“Lovely to meet you, Your Grace,” she said with surprising aplomb. “I have heard so much about you.”
“Well, we must be on our way.” She grabbed Sarah’s elbow in a covert grip like the one her mother frequently used on her. The sly way the duke looked at her little sister made her want to step between them to shield her from his attention. It was all she could do to maintain her composure and measure her pace as they exited. “Good day, gentlemen.”
Frankie waited until they were out in the Promenade and well out of sight of the tearoom windows before glowering at her little sister.
“I thought we were going to have tea,” Sarah said, glaring back.
“No time for that. We have more important things to do.”
“More important than tea with a duke?” She gave an irritable huff as Frankie propelled her along the street to the cab stand. “You’d better not let Mama hear you talk like that.”
* * *
Reynard watched Ottenberg’s face register amusement as Frankie collected her impressionable young sister and left. Rotter-berg
was more like it. The man looked at Frankie’s little sister as if she were a potential acquisition. He was a swine trumped up in fancy clothes and oily manners, and he was making it clear that he wasn’t about to abandon his interest in Frankie.
They stood facing each other for a moment, neither willing to give visual ground. Then the duke produced another deceptive smile as he laid his napkin on the table and began to don his monogramed gloves.
“I really should thank you, Boulton.” He drew a breath that expanded his broad chest even farther.
“For what?” Reynard braced for whatever was to come.
“For bungling your way into a trap that was set for me.” His grin grew broader. “The invitation you intercepted was meant for me. Tutty’s daughter was plotting to be my bride. She thought that she and her pathetic father could force me into it. As it happened, you saved me a good bit of trouble. I owe you, Boulton, and I always pay my debts.” He reached for his hat. “Fair warning, I also collect what I am due.”
He looked Reynard over, seeming less than impressed with what he saw. “You should know: had I fired the second shot”—he sneered—“the spineless Tutty would never have risen again.”
* * *
That night, Reynard made his rounds in London, accompanied by the very useful Grycel Manse. His goal was to learn as much about the duke’s dealings as possible, and he hit “pay dirt”—as Red Strait would have put it—when he found one of the directors of Coutts Bank drowning his marital sorrows in gin at the Cecil Hotel bar. Additional spirits and a thick beefsteak freed the man’s confidence and he revealed that a certain German had been buying up debts of men prominent in merchant houses and industrial concerns for shillings on the guinea. And not just his bank, he related. He’d seen correspondence relating to similar action at Child’s and Martin’s . . . all private banks and generally well regarded, but pleased to unload some of their less profitable loans.
Persuasion was no longer required by the end of the meal. The German in question was Ottenberg. He was making a play to become a power in London commerce, and he was doing it on the backs of those who had outspent their means.
“Not illegal,” Manse said to Reynard as they left the Cecil and headed across the Thames for London’s southern precincts.
“Just business,” Reynard said dryly as they hailed a cab. “Until your new creditor starts making demands for coin and starts selling off your shops or moving into your house.”
“Or makin’ free with your daughters,” Manse said under his breath.
Reynard stopped in the midst of climbing aboard a hansom cab.
“Damn.” He looked at Manse in the lamplight along the embankment. “You’re sure of that?”
“Servant talk.” Manse’s blocky face was serious. “Most of Tutty’s retainers have been let go, some with juicy stories to tell. Word is, the Tutty daughters aren’t lookin’ so good of late.”
Reynard settled back into the cab seat as Manse climbed in beside him. “The duke is every bit as bad as I feared.”
They visited a prominent music hall, a couple of gambling establishments, and ended up at Beulah MacNeal’s Chancery. They were welcomed by the proprietress herself and offered seats and champagne on the mezzanine overlooking the playing floor. They sipped and gossiped and Beulah chuckled at a few of their stories and contributed a few racy bits of which she had personal knowledge. Just as they were getting comfortable, Beulah’s keen eye spotted a familiar figure handing off his hat and walking stick to one of the servers.
“What is it?” Reynard detected the change in her attention and turned to follow her gaze.
Redmond Strait was headed for the bar, looking more subdued than Reynard had ever seen him. His shoulders were rounded, his hair was rumpled, and his chin bore a three-day growth.
Reynard glanced back at Beulah, who raised one eyebrow. He rose and handed off his glass to a servant. “I’ll send him home.”
Reynard found Red leaning on the bar, one foot on the brass railing, contemplating the play of light through a shot of golden Irish whiskey.
“Imagine seeing you here.” Reynard leaned an elbow on the bar beside Red. “I thought you agreed to stay away from here and contemplate your losses for a while.”
“Yeah, well, I ain’t too fond of my own company just now,” Red said, sipping the whiskey. “Thought I’d find somebody else’s to keep me from dwellin’ on—” He halted and grew downright morose. “I got problems, Fox.”
“Don’t we all.” Reynard signaled the barman for a shot, and then settled an observant gaze on the Westerner. He was passing fond of the old prospector and didn’t like seeing him like this. “What’s got you off your drink?”
“I done somethin’ stupid.”
“Welcome to the human race, Red.”
“I mean real stupid.” Red set the glass of whiskey down without tasting it again, which set off an alarm in Reynard. Anything bad enough to put Red off his beloved Irish lightning was bad indeed. “I got a few markers out, you know.” He paused and rubbed a spot on the mahogany bar with a meaty finger, then braced to make his confession. “More’n a dozen. A couple are big enough to choke a horse.”
Reynard nodded. He had gathered as much from other sources.
“Well . . .” Red swallowed. Clearly, this was hard for the old boy to talk about. “They been bought up—at least some of ’em have.”
Reynard felt his gut twist. Buying up debts. Mentally and physically he braced, thinking, please, don’t let it be
—
“The duke what’s been courtin’ Frankie—he’s the one bought ’em.”
“Ottenberg,” Reynard gritted out, half expecting a thunderclap and sulfurous fumes to appear at the sound of the name.
“Yeah. Him. Anyway, I saw him out an’ about today, down near Fleet Street. He took me for a drink, showed me my markers, and told me I owed him twelve thousand. Said he wants payment. I told him I didn’t have it—straight out—but, if he’d wait ’til I hear about the new vein in our North Star mine, I might have it and more.” The memory turned Red’s face to granite. “The varmint smiled like a rattler gettin’ ready to strike. Said he’d think about it, since we’re likely on the way to bein’ family.
Then he said he might find another way for me to take care of my debt.”
Reynard clenched his hands into fists and his stomach did a slow grind. Ottenberg wanted Frankie, that much was clear, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out what he would propose to settle Red’s debt. It was surprising the wretch hadn’t come right out with it, there and then.
The idea of Frankie being forced into marriage because of her uncle’s debts infuriated him. While she claimed to be averse to matrimony, she would do anything to see her beloved family safe—including marry a man unscrupulous enough to blackmail her into it.
He couldn’t let it get that far.
Gritting his teeth, he turned to the whiskey waiting before him on the bar and threw it back in one gulp. The fire in his throat joined the one in his blood to set his gaze alight.
“The worst part?” Red shoved the still-full glass away from him on the bar top. “Facin’ my girls. Lizzie will skin me alive. I prob’ly deserve that, pissin’ away the family money. But Frankie and Cece and Sarah—I love ’em like my own. I’d rather die than see disappointment on their sweet faces.”
Reynard nodded, unsettled by how deeply he was drawn into Red’s emotion. He understood that protectiveness—was feeling an annoying bout of it himself. If he had resources of his own, he could give Red a loan or even pay off the marker altogether. His difficult financial situation was suddenly even more infuriating. He was kept constantly at the edge of insolvency by his spiteful uncle, despite the fact that he was the named heir and entitled to an income. Yet again, the secret behind his uncle’s disdain for him was circumscribing and constraining his life.
“Go home, Red. Now.” He took the old boy by the arm and ushered him toward the hat check and then the front door. The Chancery’s doorman nodded and stepped outside to whistle for a cab. As they waited, Reynard looked into Red’s troubled face.
“I promise you, Red, we’ll find a way to deal with your debts—and see to it Frankie and the girls are safe and provided for.”
As Red climbed into the cab Reynard paid for, the Fox realized he had made yet another promise he would have a hard time keeping. What was it about these blasted Bumgartens that made him want to pick up a blade and carve the world into a different shape for them?