“You’ve apparently enjoyed the longest ride in the park in the history of Hyde Park,” Lady Rhona MacHugh said.
Colin stopped at the foot of the garden steps. “And a fine day to you too, sister.”
“Don’t start acting like a brother.” Edana used her foot to push out a chair at the table they occupied beneath a stately oak. “We worry about you.”
They made a pretty picture on a pretty afternoon, two lovely redheads at their leisure in the MacHugh back garden. But then, Colin had kissed Anwen Windham farewell not an hour past. He’d be in a sunny mood even if rain were coming down in torrents and a foul miasma had wafted in off the river.
He took the proffered seat. “What have you two been up to while you were so worried about me?”
“We got a letter from Hamish.” Rhona passed over a single folded sheet of paper. “Married life agrees with him.”
The letter had been addressed to Colin. “Reading my mail, are you?”
“It was from Hamish,” Edana said, filling a teacup for Colin. “If there was trouble, we’d want to know.” She added milk and sugar, gave it a stir, put four biscuits on the saucer, and passed it over.
“If there was trouble, you two would be in the thick of it. My day got away from me.”
“We called on Cousin Dougal,” Rhona said, arranging three sandwiches on a plate and setting it beside Colin’s teacup. “He and Patience are in anticipation of a blessed event. As laird, you should settle a sum on the child.”
The tea was strong and hot, the biscuits buttery and sweet. Colin would get to the sandwiches.
“Ham’s the laird.” Hamish was also the duke, poor sod. Now that he’d snabbled Megan Windham for a duchess, the duke part doubtless rested more lightly on his broad shoulders.
“The clan counsel met,” Edana said, waving at Hamish’s letter. “They decided that because Ham’s the duke, you should take up the responsibilities of laird, at least until Hamish gets his dukedom sorted out.”
Meaning, until a ducal heir or three was on the way.
“I’m the laird now?” Colin considered the third sweet. “I’ll have a wee word with Hamish over this nonsense. It’s a dirty damned trick to play on me, when I’m stuck here in London and can’t speak for myself at the counsel. They want free whisky at their gatherings. Excellent, free, legal whisky.”
Though Colin was pleased. Being laird these days was mostly a matter of attending weddings and christenings, presiding at games, and settling squabbles.
“It was my idea,” Rhona said. “Hamish has enough to do, learning to be the duke. You’re next in line, and if you didn’t take the job, I might have been stuck with it.”
“You might still be,” Colin said, demolishing the last biscuit. “I’ve better things to do than listen to the women argue over which red dye to use in the hunting plaid.”
Edana kicked him under the table—an affectionate blow, from her. “We got Hamish married off. Behave yourself or you’re next.”
A fly had the temerity to buzz near Colin’s sandwiches. Edana flicked her serviette, and the insect was either killed in mid-flight or inspired to disappear into thin air.
“You got Hamish married off?” Colin countered, starting on the sandwiches. Chicken with a dash of French mustard, his favorite. “To hear the Windhams tell it, a certain English duke was involved, along with a bloody lot of meddling cousins.”
Good fellows, those cousins. One of them had escorted Anwen in the park that morning—more or less.
“Who dragged Hamish the length of the Great North Road?” Rhona asked. “Who endured his muttering and pouting the whole way? Who argued with him for the duration of a Highland winter to take us to London? Who made him bring his formal kilts, in which he looks so very fine despite being the shyest man ever to call Perthshire his home?”
“In which he looks verra fine,” Colin mimicked, “despite bein’ the shyest mon ever to call Pairthsher his hame? You get very Scottish when you’re on your dignity, Ronnie mine, and in answer to your questions, I did. Hamish and I nearly came to blows several times.”
Rhona smiled, snatched Colin’s sandwich, took a bite, then set it back on his plate. “I am verra Scottish, and that’s Lady Ronnie to you, laddie. We got Hamish married off. Our work here is done, unless you’ve a notion to stick your dainty foot in parson’s mousetrap.”
“Now you sound daft and English,” Colin said, picking up a locket sitting by Rhona’s plate. A cameo brooch was suspended on a gold chain, and the links had become knotted up. “It’s you two who should be looking over the eligibles.”
“We have,” Edana said, “and they’re more eligible than interesting. Don’t break that locket, please. Your friend Mr. Montague isn’t a bad sort.”
Colin considered Edana’s casual tone, considered her absorption with the top of the garden wall thirty yards away. He also considered the knotted-up chain, lest she kick him for simply looking at her. The gold was delicate, but the locket was unwearable in its present condition.
Damn Hamish for running back home with his duchess. He was the eldest, the brother who ought to deal in awkward truths.
“You could do worse than attach Win Montague’s interest,” Colin said, rolling the knotted links gently between his fingers. One did not describe one’s best friend as a lazy tomcat, and yet what did Win do but make wagers, lay about at the tailor’s, pine for Mrs. Bellingham, and swill spirits at his clubs?
“I suppose he has a ladybird,” Edana muttered. “English gentlemen do, before they take a wife. I know that.”
And in pragmatic Scottish fashion, she was prepared to accept reality. “Eddie, Win hasn’t one special ladybird,” Colin said. “I can’t see that he has much of anything to support a wife with either.”
The chain was loosening, as chains often did when patience, light pressure, and warmth were applied.
Edana snapped her serviette at another pesky fly. “I have funds of my own.”
Ronnie was taking half the day to consume the remains of Colin’s sandwich. No help there.
“Those are your funds.” Colin unclasped the necklace so he could more easily untangle it. “That money is for you, and for your daughters should their father die before making provision for them.” Not for supporting the lazy younger son of an English lord.
“I have to marry somebody,” Edana retorted, balling up her serviette and pitching it at Colin’s face. “If I don’t marry, I’ll turn into Auntie Eddie, the old lady all the braw half-drunk lads stand up with at the ceilidh when they lose a bet. Some toothless crofter will offer for me when I’m too old to have children, and I’ll accept him just to get away from the pity of my siblings.”
“Eddie,” Rhona said, holding out a biscuit. “Cease your dramatics. Colin will take us home, and we can be done with this London nonsense. One brother’s a duke, the other’s a laird, we’ve our own funds. We’ll not want for dances.”
Edana slapped the biscuit from her sister’s hand and dashed into the house.
Colin eased the knot from the golden chain and finished his tea—cold now. Crumbs littered the paving stones as a result of Edana’s tantrum.
He passed the necklace over to Ronnie. “Is Eddie that taken with Win Montague?”
“She fancies him. Mr. Montague has been insinuating himself into your good graces, and that means he pays attention to me and Eddie. She fancied that dreadful Sir Fletcher when she first met him, and next week she’ll fancy somebody else. You’ve saved me a trip to Ludgate Hill both by provoking her temper and by repairing her jewelry.”
“Win is being gentlemanly,” Colin said. “He’s the reason I’m a member of the right clubs, and my custom is accepted at the right establishments. When he stands up with you and Eddie, he’s being a friend.”
Rhona patted Colin’s hand, and abruptly he wanted to send his teacup to the flagstones along with Eddie’s biscuit. Was this how Anwen felt when her family cosseted and fussed despite her roaring good health, fierce heart, and active intellect?
“Eddie and I are a pair of hags,” Rhona replied, “and Mr. Montague is so kind as to spare us a dance here and there, but when was the last time he bought you a drink?”
He’d bought Colin a drink to celebrate Hamish’s succession to the title weeks ago. “The English don’t pinch pennies the way we do, Ronnie. They don’t keep track.”
“Yes, Colin, they do,” Rhona said. “They know who has a title, who has money. Who has a title but no money, and who has both. Hamish and you have both, now Eddie and I have both too. Your Mr. Montague isn’t stupid.”
“He’s quite bright.” That much Colin could honestly say. “He also takes an interest in the less fortunate.”
“You are not the less fortunate, Colin MacHugh, and neither are Eddie and I.”
God help the man who thought so. “I meant that Winthrop Montague sits on the board of the House of Urchins, and soon I shall as well.”
So that Win could spend more time slobbering over Mrs. Bellingham’s hand?
And yet, Win wouldn’t know what to do with young John or his friends. Anwen had listened to Colin’s ideas and added a few of her own. Between them, they’d not let John slip away to a life of crime without a fight.
“You’re to take up a charity?” Rhona mused. “Isn’t that what the church is for?”
“I think it’s like being a laird, Ronnie. If you have a title, even a courtesy title, then certain expectations come with it.”
“You have sisters. Edana wanted to see a London season, I wanted some new frocks. Now, we want to go home, Colin, and we expect you to escort us.”
He couldn’t tell them he had more kissing to do, though he hoped he did—a lot more kissing. “Turn tail now, will you? Edana stomps her foot and we all pack up and leave? I think we owe Hamish and Megan a little more of a honeymoon than this, Ronnie. Eddie is thinking only of herself, but when she’s staring wedded bliss in the face day after day back home, when she’s Auntie Eddie in truth, she’ll wish she’d tarried another few weeks in London.”
Rhona rose and dusted off her skirts, then dropped the locket into a pocket, where it would doubtless get all tangled up again.
“We’re without witnesses,” she said, “so I can admit you have a point. Then too, you won’t be the one shut up in the coach with Eddie the whole way home. I can put that pleasure off for another few weeks. Mr. Maarten came by while you were flirting in the park, and he asked that you attend him at your earliest convenience.”
Colin stood as well. If he was expected to escort his sisters that evening, he needed a damned nap, not another meeting with Maarten.
“How do you know I was flirting?”
Rhona patted his cheek. “You’re always flirting. Hamish was the brooder, you are the flirt, though you’re a dab hand at fixing jewelry too. Magnus is the hothead, Angus the scholar.”
She was right. “What about Alistair?”
“The dreamer. I’m beginning to dream of home, I suspect you are too, Colin. Maarten said he’ll be leaving by the first of May.”
“Any idea why he came by?”
“He left you a note in the library. Does Win Montague really have no ladybird?”
What did a friend say to a sister? Rhona might be able to talk sense into Edana.
“Montague can’t afford a mistress, Ronnie, and he’s drawn to a woman who’s both beyond his means and beneath his station.”
“He’s neither eligible nor interesting, then, not in any meaningful sense. Time to widen your circle of friends, Colin, lest Eddie and I grow bored.”
The last time Ronnie and Eddie had grown bored, they’d sold Hamish’s cigars on the sly to other young ladies.
Colin offered his sister his arm, which had become a habit over the past weeks. “Where are we off to tonight?”
“Lady Pembroke’s rout. The talk will be political and artistic. You should be bored witless.”
A week ago, even a day ago, Colin would have consoled himself with the knowledge that as a widow, Lady Pembroke would have other widows in attendance. Widows were among the friendliest exponents of polite society to young, single men of good birth and better fortune.
“You’re right—I’ll be bored witless.” Unless Anwen Windham were there.
If she was among the guests, Colin wouldn’t be bored at all.
* * *
“We value your scholarly abilities exceedingly, Hitchings,” Winthrop Montague said. “But these are not typical English schoolboys, amenable to the values of polite society.”
“Blood will tell,” Hitchings replied, folding his hands across his paunch. “I can’t argue that, though I took this post intending to treat these children the same as if they were the sons of decent families.”
Anwen shot a look across the table at Colin, for that was the very problem. The boys had more or less raised themselves. Why say grace three times a day if there’s nothing to eat? Why learn Latin when you’d never own a bound book from which to read it?
“You are to be commended for your generosity of spirit,” Colin said, “but the oldest boys are reaching a dangerous age. A somewhat more military approach with them might yield faster results. As it happens, I’m familiar with how the army shapes boys into men.”
“The lads are running out of time,” Hitchings said, “just as we are running out of money.”
Lord Derwent, who’d been notably silent throughout the meeting, sat back. “Just so, Hitchings. Out of time and nearly out of money.” He was a thin, older man, with a nasal voice that carried even when he spoke quietly. “This is as good a moment as any to inform the assemblage that the press of business requires that at month’s end, I must regretfully resign my post. With Lord Colin joining the board, we’ll maintain a quorum, if only just. I wish you gentlemen every success with the House of Urchins.”
While the men rose and shook Derwent’s hand, wishing him well, claiming they understood, and thanking him for his leadership, Anwen silently reviewed a litany of Welsh curses. Missing half the meetings and citing rules intended to squeeze legislation out of three hundred drunken members of the House of Commons was not leadership.
“Miss Anwen, thank you for attending on behalf of the ladies’ committee,” Winthrop Montague said. “Always a pleasure when a pretty face can grace a gathering, no matter how dreary the agenda.”
He was the chairman of the board of directors now, else Anwen would have made a comment about a handsome face being an equally pleasant addition to the decorative scheme—despite all the noise gentlemen typically generated.
“Thank you, Mr. Montague. I appreciate the chance to learn more about how the institution is managed. Lord Colin’s involvement gives me great hope for our continued success.”
Mr. Montague aimed a twinkling smile at her. “You believe housing a budding cutpurse is the path to success?”
Colin appeared at her side, her cloak over his arm.
“I believe,” Anwen said, smiling right back, “that when children have been cooped up for months, bored witless, beaten for the smallest lapses, without anyone to love them or remark upon their frequent good behavior, one minor slip is the behavior of a saint.”
If she’d kicked Mr. Montague’s ankle, he couldn’t have looked more surprised.
“A refreshingly optimistic point of view,” Colin said. “Somewhere between that outlook and complete despair lies a reasonable way forward, I hope.”
Hitchings had ushered Lord Derwent to the door, though the headmaster had clearly overheard Anwen’s outburst.
“Madam, I commend your faith in these children,” Hitchings said, “truly I do, and no one will be more pleased than I if Lord Colin’s attempts prove successful.”
Colin wrapped Anwen’s hand over his arm, as if he knew she was two heartbeats away from interrupting Hitchings’s lecture.
“But,” Hitchings went on, “if John’s adventure were to be mentioned in the newspapers, eleven other children would find themselves again homeless, friendless, and starving. When you advocate for giving John another chance, for seeing the good in him, remember those other children, and all the children who might someday benefit from this institution if we can overcome the present difficulty. A lark for young Master Wellington could have tragic consequences for many.”
He shuffled out, his birch rod for once nowhere to be seen.
“He has a point,” Mr. Montague said. “You must admit he has a point.”
So do I. “He’s had nearly a year to impress upon the boys the opportunity this place can be for them,” Anwen said. “Hitchings has tried, I’ll grant him that, but his efforts with the older boys have not been successful.”
“They haven’t entirely failed either,” Colin said, holding out her cloak. “And now it’s my turn to see if I can inspire the boys to more responsible scholarship. Montague, thanks for attending, and I’ll see you here Tuesday next.”
Mr. Montague consulted his pocket watch. “What’s Tuesday next?”
“The regular board meeting,” Anwen said. “And you are now the chair.”
Montague snapped his watch closed. “’Fraid that won’t do. I have a standing obligation on Tuesday afternoons, and until I can rearrange my schedule, Lord Colin will have to chair the meetings.”
Colin shoved Anwen’s bonnet at her when she would have reminded Mr. Montague that without him present, they’d not have a quorum, and thus no business could be transacted.
She snatched the bonnet from his lordship. “If you can spare me a few minutes, Lord Colin, I’d like to look in on the boys before I leave.”
“I’ll be on my way.” Mr. Montague sketched a bow and sauntered out the door, gold-handled walking stick propped against his shoulder.
“I can’t close the door,” Colin said, very softly, “though if you curse quietly, nobody will hear you.”
“I can curse in Welsh,” Anwen said. “But foul language won’t change a thing. That prancing bufflehead can’t be bothered to miss a card game for the sake of these children.”
“Is bufflehead the worst appellation you can think of?”
“Imbecile, buffoon, dandiprat.” She lapsed into Welsh, a fine, expressive language for describing what anatomical impossibilities a man might perform with his infernal consequence.
“I caught most of that,” Colin said. “Gaelic and Welsh being kissing cousins. Let’s take a look at the ledgers Hitchings left for us in the chairman’s office.”
Oh, dear. “You can understand Welsh?”
“When you speak it,” he said, leading the way down the corridor, “about as well as you can understand my Gaelic, I’m guessing. I’ll ask my man of business to take a look at these ledgers when he and I meet this afternoon.”
All over again, Anwen was furious. “Won’t approving such a review take a resolution by the board, discussion, a motion, a second, half the afternoon wasted debating a commonsense suggestion that will cost the institution not one penny?”
She’d seen the board pull that maneuver any number of times, only to table the motion because somebody was late for an appointment with his bootmaker.
“You raise an interesting point,” Colin said, pausing outside the office door. “If the board can’t gather a quorum, we can only have informational meetings, and as acting chair, we’ll do pretty much what I say we’ll do.”
“Oh.” Anwen’s anger evaporated into a pressing need to wrap her arms around Colin and hug him for sheer glee. She lifted the latch and pushed the door open, for the chairman’s office would afford them some privacy,
She stopped short on the threshold.
Four boys were gathered about the table, one of them—Dickie—wielding a tool that looked like a chisel with the narrow end flattened.
“That’s the strongbox,” Anwen said. “John, Dick, Thomas, Joseph, what are you doing with the strongbox?”
Lord Colin snatched the tool from Dickie’s hand. “They were breaking into the strongbox, and judging from the wear on these fittings, it’s not the first time they’ve stolen from the very hand that’s trying to keep them fed, clothed, housed, and out of jail.”
* * *
Esther, Duchess of Moreland liked to go barefoot.
Percival had learned that about his wife before they’d even wed. She also liked to have her feet massaged—no tickling allowed, unless a husband wanted to lose his foot-massaging privileges for at least a fortnight. Why those thoughts should occur to him as he peeked in on his wife at midafternoon, he could not have said.
She looked up from addressing invitations, a niece arranged on either side of her at the library table. Percival silently blew her a kiss rather than disturb her, and drew the door closed.
“Thomas,” he said to the footman on duty at the end of the corridor, “please send a tray of bread and cheese to the ladies, and include a bottle of hock with my compliments.”
“Of course, Your Grace. Some lemon biscuits too?”
They were Esther’s favorites. “Good thought, and a few forget-me-nots if we have any on hand.” Esther said they were the same blue as Percival’s eyes.
Thomas bowed. “Very good, sir.”
A commotion in the foyer below signaled the arrival of the duke’s oldest son, Devlin St. Just, Earl of Rosecroft. Percival’s view from the floor above meant he could see that his son’s dark hair was still thick even at the very top of his head.
Esther worried about the boys going bald when their father had not, and Percival knew better than to make light of her concern, though what did a man’s hair have to do with the price of brandy in the bedroom?
“Greetings, my boy!” the duke called, halfway down the stairs. “You are without reinforcements?”
“Bronwyn remained in the mews, petting cats, talking to horses, and getting dirty,” Rosecroft said. “I’m sure she’ll come inside to polish a bannister or two before my business is concluded.”
A duke maintained a decorous household. A grandpapa had all the best bannisters.
“She will pay her compliments to me and to the ladies in the library,” Percival said. “You’d think the women were planning to invade France, the way they’ve gone about preparing for this card party. How is your countess?”
Rosecroft was taller than the duke by perhaps two inches, and whereas Percival’s coloring was fair, his firstborn was Black Irish to the bone.
“Emmie thrives, despite all challenges.”
And because the countess thrived—Rosecroft devoted himself to that very objective—the earl thrived and their children thrived as well.
“The library is occupied by Her Grace and the nieces,” Percival said. “Why don’t we join Bronwyn in the mews?”
Rosecroft passed his hat, spurs, and riding crop to Hodges, the butler. Not by a flicker of an eyelash did the earl react to the duke’s request for privacy.
“We will be called upon to name kittens,” Rosecroft observed, “and reminded that kittens and puppies make fine playmates.”
“So they do,” the duke said. “In fairy tales.”
Percival’s true motive for choosing the mews was that Rosecroft loved horses the way young grandchildren loved a smooth, curved bannister. The equine was Rosecroft’s familiar. When he’d been a shy, tongue-tied boy trying to fit into a bewildering array of brothers and sisters in the ducal household, the horses had given him solace and room to breathe.
Also a place to excel beyond all of his siblings.
“Tell me of your outing in the park with Anwen earlier this week,” the duke said as they crossed the garden. “She appeared quite invigorated by her excursion.”
“We met Lord Colin, as she’d told me we would. Man knows how to sit a horse.”
No higher praise could flow from Rosecroft’s lips. “Good to know. What else?”
“His riding stock has some Iberian blood, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find Strathclyde draft a generation or two back. Fascinating combination, the hot and the cold, the light and the heavy. The Clyde horse is a magnificent beast, but so are the Andalusian breeds. The result of a cross is a beast that’s both—”
“Rosecroft.” The result of Anwen’s dawn ride was a son trying to prevaricate at a dead gallop.
Interesting.
“Anwen’s hat, if that’s what it’s called, came loose. Lord Colin was compelled by gentlemanly concern to help search for it.”
The old hat in the bushes ploy. “Not very imaginative.”
“They found the hat, as it were, after diligent searching.”
“You are smiling, Rosecroft. Does one conclude you are proud of your cousin for losing her millinery?”
Percival was. Anwen spent too much time in her sisters’ shadows, too much time being quiet and agreeable. For a Windham—much less a Windham with flaming red hair—that simply wasn’t right.
“Her hat was very small, Your Grace. Locating it likely took determination on the part of both parties.”
A mutual hunt for the hat, as it were, the only acceptable variety. “What do we know about Lord Colin, besides that he rides well, has excellent horseflesh, and a keen eye for a stray hat?”
“He owns a distillery—a legal distillery—and the product is considered exceptionally good quality. He’s particular about the barrels he uses to age the whisky. He doesn’t bottle a young whisky.”
“Something of an innovator, then. What was his military record?”
“Brave on the battlefield, excellent record as an artificer, and a first-rate strategist. He’d leave his campfires burning and one man behind playing fiddle tunes, while the rest of his company sneaked off to go raiding. The French fell for that ruse repeatedly. He bothered to learn Spanish and French, and he stayed out of trouble with his superior officers, for the most part.”
Lord Colin’s older brother had kept him out of trouble.
“And with the ladies?” Percival asked.
They’d reached the back of the garden, and a shriek of childish laughter echoed from across the alley.
“Lord Colin was with the ladies rather a lot,” Rosecroft said. “No bastards, that I could find.”
That would matter to Rosecroft, given his own irregular antecedents. It mattered to the duke as well. Many a fine gentleman had illegitimate offspring, but in the estimation of polite society—and the Duke and Duchess of Moreland—those children deserved their father’s support.
“So Lord Colin has nothing scandalous lurking in his ancient history,” Percival said, though a man not yet thirty didn’t have ancient history. “What about recent history? Is he keeping a ladybird? Playing too deep? Making stupid wagers, or hunting for a different hat every day of the week?”
A half-grown orange cat skittered over the garden wall in a panicked leap and dodged off into the heartsease beneath the nearest balcony.
“The ladies seem to pursue Lord Colin,” Rosecroft said, as flowers bobbed in the cat’s wake. “The merry widows and bored wives.”
“And his lordship, being young, newly titled, and freshly sprung on polite society, does anything but flee over the nearest garden wall. I don’t like it, Rosecroft.”
Percival unlatched the garden gate, which opened on a shady alley. The Moreland mews and coach house sat across the alley, ranged around a small courtyard, where young Bronwyn was using a leafy twig to entertain a tomcat.
“I see you are charming Galahad,” Percival said. “Hello, princess.”
“Grandpapa!” Bronwyn abandoned the cat and pelted up to the duke, arms outstretched.
Percival caught her up in a tight hug, bussed her cheek, and set her down—with the older children, it was important to set them down quickly. Bronwyn would soon be too dignified for such exuberance, but Percival would steal a few more hugs before then.
“Galahad was taking a nap, but he woke up when he saw I had come to call. I’ve inspected the horses, Papa. They are all present and accounted for.”
“You inspected the hayloft too,” Rosecroft said. “That pinafore used to be white, Winnie.”
“It will be white again,” she said, rubbing a finger over the dust streaking her apron. “Just not today.”
Rosecroft ruffled her dark ringlets. “As long as you’ve already ensured the employment of the laundresses for another week, I don’t see any harm in a few more trips up and down the ladder.”
Bronwyn was a climber. Trees, attics, haylofts, the garden folly…She’d be atop any of them in a blink. An odd quality for a little girl, but her early years had lacked supervision. Rosecroft likened her aerial predilections to manning the crow’s nest, a safe observatory above all the fighting.
“Will you come up with me?” she asked, grabbing Rosecroft’s hand.
“Afraid I can’t,” Rosecroft said. “I must pay my respects to Sir Galahad.”
The cat was back to napping in the sun, a splendid orange comma of a feline, resting from his endless bouts in the romantic lists.
“He likes to play,” Bronwyn said, dropping her papa’s hand and scampering off.
“Does Lord Colin like to play?” Percival asked.
Rosecroft knelt to pet the cat, and stentorian rumbling filled the afternoon quiet. “His lordship doesn’t gamble to excess, he doesn’t chase the lightskirts overtly, I’ve never seen him drunk, nor found anybody who has.”
“My boy, you can either tell me what it is you’re reluctant to share, or you can tell Her Grace. I’d rather you told me and I hazard the duchess would rather you did as well.”
Rosecroft stood with the cat in his arms. The beast lolled against the earl’s chest, not a care—or shred of dignity—to its name.
“Lord Colin has debts,” Rosecroft said, scratching the cat’s chin.
“We all have debts,” Percival snorted. “Particularly at this time of year. You would be well advised to start saving now for Bronwyn’s come out, my boy. The undertaking can cost more than a military campaign, and Lord Colin has likely assisted in the launch of both sisters.”
“Something isn’t adding up,” Rosecroft said. “I mean that literally. Lord Colin is a single gentleman of means and new to Town, but for a fellow who’s never half-seas over, he has an enormous bill for liquor at every one of his clubs.”
Well, drat and damn. “You’re suggesting he has the very hard head of the former soldier?”
“He has bills all over Bond Street. Tailors, bootmakers, haberdashers, glove makers and more. His dressing closet must take up an entire wing of the house.”
“A dandy with a hard head.”
“Many a dandy has a hard head, and fine cattle, and some commercial revenue quietly supplementing his agricultural income, but I’ve never seen a single gentleman run up anything like the sums Lord Colin owes the trades after mere weeks in Town.” Rosecroft named a total that topped the annual income of most vicars and not a few barons.
“And the season’s only half over,” Percival muttered.
Esther would be unhappy with this development. She’d had hopes where Lord Colin was concerned. Anwen, however, would be devastated. No Windham daughter or niece could be permitted to develop expectations where a spendthrift younger son was concerned, no matter how he excelled at finding missing hats.