Stephanie Laurens Rogues' Reform Bundle

by Stephanie Laurens

Toby smiled amiably and waited while the captain knocked. After a low-voiced conversation with the guardian of the portal, conducted through a grille in the door, they were admitted and shown into a sizeable room, dimly lit except for the shaded lamps which shed their glow onto the tables. There were perhaps twenty gentlemen present; few raised their heads as Toby followed Gurnard across the room.

  With his usual air of interested enquiry, Toby glanced about him, taking in the expressions of grim determination with which many of the gentlemen applied themselves to their cards and dice. There was a large table devoted to Hazard, another to Faro. Smaller tables attested to the hell’s reputation for variety; there were even two older gentlemen engaged in a hand of Piquet.

  This was the third night Toby had spent with Gurnard, and the third hell they had visited. He was, as usual, following one of his father’s maxims, that which declared that experience was the best teacher. After tonight, Toby felt, he would have learned all he needed of gaming hells. His real interest tonight lay in the play. Gurnard had allowed him to win for the past two nights; Toby had begun to suspect the captain’s motives.

  Initially, Gurnard had brushed against him with apparently no particular intent; they had subsequently struck up an acquaintance. It was after their sojourn at Little Bickmanstead that the captain had sought him out and, being apparently at a loose end, had offered to show him the sights. Toby had accepted the offer readily; he had not previously spent much time in the capital.

  Now, however, he wondered whether the captain had taken him for a flat.

  By the end of the evening, which Toby promptly declared once his losses had, almost mysteriously, overtaken his current allowance, he was quite sure the captain had done just that. Comforting himself with the reflection that, as his father was wont to say, there was no harm in making mistakes just as long as one didn’t make the same mistake twice, he frowned slightly as he looked across at Gurnard. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to meet that last vowel until the pater returns to town—but he should be back any day.”

  He hadn’t expected to outrun his ready funds. However, as his father had settled a considerable sum on him two years before, and managed it for him under his direction the better to teach him the ways of finance, Toby had no real qualms about asking Horatio for an advance. “I’ll speak to him as soon as he returns.”

  Gurnard sat back, his face flushed with success and the wine he had steadily consumed. “Oh, you don’t want to do that.” He held up his hand in a fencer’s gesture. “Never let it be said that I caused father and son to fall out over the simple matter of a few crowns.”

  Toby could have set him straight—he fully expected his father to have a good laugh over his adventure—but some sixth sense made him hold back. “Oh?” he said guilelessly. There were rather more than “a few crowns” involved.

  Gurnard frowned, his face a mask of concentration. “Perhaps there’s some way you can repay the debt without having to apply to your pater?”

  “Such as?” Toby asked, a chill stealing down his back.

  Gurnard looked ingenuous. He frowned into space. Then his face cleared. “Well, I know I’d count it a blessing to have a few minutes alone with your sister.”

  He leant across the table and, with just the slightest hesitation, conspiratorially lowered his voice. “Your sister mentioned that your party are planning to attend the gala at Vauxhall. Perhaps, in repayment of your debt, you could arrange for me to meet with her in the Temple of Diana—just while the fireworks are on. I’ll return her to you when the show’s over, and no one will be any the wiser.”

  Not only a flat—a foolish flat. Toby hid his reaction behind a vacant expression. The poor light concealed the steely glint in his eyes. “But how will I get Clarissa to agree?”

  “Just tell her you’re taking her to meet her most ardent admirer. Don’t tell her my name—I want to surprise her. Women like the romantic touch.” Gurnard smiled and waved a languid hand. “Dare say you haven’t noticed, but your sister and I are deeply in love. You needn’t fear I’ll take advantage. But with all the attention that’s focused on her we’ve found it hard to find the time to talk, to get to know each other as we’d like.”

  Concluding that the captain was the sort of gentleman he should hand over to higher authorities, Toby slowly nodded. “All right,” he agreed, his tone bland. He shrugged. “If you’ll be happy with that instead of the money…?”

  “Definitely,” Gurnard replied, his eyes suddenly gleaming. “Ten minutes alone with your sister will be ample recompense.”

  “TOBY, is anything wrong?”

  Bringing up the rear as his exuberant siblings tumbled back into the house after their morning ride, Toby jumped and cast a startled glance at Sophie. Seeing the conjecture in her cousin’s open face, she nodded.

  “I thought so.” With a glance at the horde disappearing up the stairs, Clarissa trailing absent-mindedly behind, she linked her arm with Toby’s. “Come into your father’s study and tell me all.”

  “It’s nothing really dreadful,” Toby hurried to assure her as they crossed the threshold of his father’s sanctum.

  “Then there’s probably no reason for you to be so worried about it,” Sophie returned. Sinking into one of the armchairs by the hearth, she fixed Toby with a commanding if affectionate eye. “Open your budget, my dear, for I really can’t let this go on. Doubtless I’m imagining all sorts of unlikely horrors; I’m sure you can set my mind at rest.”

  Toby grimaced at her, too used to Lucilla to take offence. He fell to pacing before the hearth, his hands clasped behind his back. “It’s that bounder Gurnard.”

  “Bounder?” Sophie looked her surprise. “I know Ned’s been calling him that for ages, but I thought that was just Ned.”

  “So did I—but now I know better. Dashed if Ned wasn’t right.”

  Sophie looked pensive, then cast a glance up at Toby. “I’ve just remembered. Your mother said she didn’t trust the man, and Clarissa agreed.”

  “Did she?” Toby brightened. “Well, that makes it easier, then.”

  “Makes what easier?” Sophie stared at Toby, consternation in her eyes. “Tobias Webb, just what is going on?”

  “No need to get into a flap. At least, not yet.”

  When Toby said no more but continued to pace the hear-thrug, Sophie straightened her shoulders. “Toby, if you don’t tell me what this is all about immediately, I’ll feel honour bound to speak to your mother.”

  Toby halted, his expression horrified. “Saints preserve us all,” he said. And proceeded to tell Sophie the story.

  “That’s iniquitous!” Sophie was incensed. “The man’s worse than a mere bounder.”

  “Undoubtedly. He’s a dangerous bounder. That’s why I want to wait until Papa gets back to lay this before him. I think it would be best for all concerned if Gurnard is stopped once and for all.”

  “Unquestionably,” Sophie agreed. After a moment, she added, “I don’t think it would serve any purpose to tell Clarissa. She doesn’t like the man as it is; I can’t see her doing anything rash.”

  Toby nodded.

  “And I really don’t think telling your mama would be a good idea.”

  “Definitely not.” Toby shuddered at the thought.

  “I suppose,” Sophie suggested. “We could seek professional assistance.”

  “The Runners? And risk a brouhaha like they made over Lady Ashbourne’s emeralds?” Toby shook his head. “That’s not a decision I’d like to make.”

  “Quite,” Sophie agreed. “Still, at least we know Gurnard’s unlikely to make a move before the gala.”

  “Precisely.” Toby’s blue gaze rested consideringly on Sophie. “All we really need do is hold the fort until then.”

  AN HOUR LATER, Jack sat in his chair in his parlour in Upper Brook Street, the table before him spread for an early luncheon, and attacked the slices of sirloin on his plate with an air of disgruntled gloom. “Permit me to warn you, brother mine, tha
t this wooing business is definitely plaguesome.”

  Harry, who had looked in on his way down to the country, raised an amused brow. “You’ve only just discovered that?”

  “I cannot recall having wooed a lady—nor any other kind of female—before.” Jack scowled at a dish of roast potatoes, then viciously skewered one.

  “I take it all is not proceeding smoothly?”

  For a full minute, Jack wrestled with a conscience that decreed that all matters between a lady and a gentleman were sacrosant, then yielded to temptation. “The damned woman’s being noble,” he growled. “She’s convinced herself that I really need to marry an heiress and is determined not to ruin my life by allowing me to marry her.”

  Harry choked on his ale. Jack rose to come around the table and thump his back but Harry waved him away. “Well,” he said, still breathless, “that was the impression you wanted to give, remember.”

  “That was then, this is now,” Jack answered with unshakeable logic. “Besides, I don’t care what the ton thinks. My only concern is what goes on in one particular golden head.”

  “So tell her.”

  “I’ve already told her I’m as rich as Croesus, but the witless woman doesn’t believe me.”

  “Doesn’t believe you?” Harry stated. “But why would you lie about something like that?”

  Jack’s expression was disgusted. “Well might you ask. As far as I can make out, she thinks I’m the sort of romantic who would marry a ‘lady of expectations’—her words—and then valiantly conceal the fact we were living on tick.”

  Harry grinned. He reached for the ale jug. “And if things had been different? If we hadn’t been favoured by fortune and you’d met her—what then? Would you have politely nodded and moved on, looking for an heiress, or would you do as she suspects and conceal the reckoning?”

  Jack shot him a malevolent glance. “The subject doesn’t arise, thank God.”

  When Harry’s grin broadened into a smile, Jack scowled. “Instead of considering hypothetical situations, why don’t you turn that fertile brain of yours to some purpose and think of a way to convince her of our wealth?”

  “Try a little harder,” Harry offered. “Be your persuasive best.”

  Jack grimaced. “Can’t be done that way; believe me, I’ve tried.” He had, too—twice. But each time he resurrected the subject, Sophie turned huge eyes full of silent reproach upon him. Combined with a brittlely fragile air, such defences were more than enough to defeat him.

  “I need someone to vouch for me, someone she’ll believe. Which means I have to wait until her uncle returns to town. He’s off looking over the Indies Corporation’s next venture at Southampton. The damnable situation is that no one has any idea of when he’ll be back.”

  Viewing his brother’s exasperated expression, evoked, so it seemed, by the prospect of having to wait a few days to make a certain lady his, Harry raised a laconic brow. Everything he had heard thus far suggested that Jack was poised to take the final momentous step into parson’s mousetrap and, amazing though it seemed, he would have a smile on his face when he did so. Love, as Harry well knew, was a force powerful enough to twist men’s minds in the most unexpected ways. He just hoped it wasn’t contagious.

  The sound of the knocker on the door being plied with determined force disrupted their peace.

  Jack looked up.

  Voices sounded in the hall, then the door opened and Toby entered. He glanced at Jack, then, noticing Harry, nodded politely. As the door shut behind him, Toby turned to Jack. “I apologize for the intrusion, but something’s come up and I’d like your opinion on the matter. But if you’re busy I can come back later.”

  “No matter.” Harry made to rise. “I can leave if you’d rather speak privately.”

  Jack raised a brow at Toby. “Can you speak before Harry?”

  Toby hesitated for only an instant. Jack had spent all the Season at Sophie’s feet, concentrating on nothing beyond Sophie and her court. Harry Lester, on the other hand, was by reputation as much of a hellion as Jack had been and had not shared his brother’s affliction. Toby’s gaze swung to Harry. “The matter concerns a Captain Gurnard.”

  Harry’s eyes narrowed. “Captain Terrence Gurnard?” The words sounded peculiarly flat and distinctly lethal. When Toby nodded, Harry settled back into his seat. “What, exactly, is that bounder up to?”

  Jack waved Toby to a seat. “Have you eaten?” When Toby shook his head, his eyes going to the half-filled platters still on the table, Jack rang for Pinkerton. “You can eat while you fill us in. I take it the problem’s not urgent?”

  “Not that urgent, no.”

  While he fortified himself, Toby recounted his outings with Gurnard and the ultimate offer to discount his losses against an arranged clandestine meeting with Clarissa.

  “So you won for the first two nights but lost heavily on the third?”

  Toby nodded at Harry. “He was setting me up, wasn’t he?”

  “It certainly sounds like it.”

  Jack glanced at his brother. “I’ve not heard much of Gurnard—what’s the story?”

  “That, I suspect, is a matter that’s exercising the minds of quite a few of the man’s creditors.” Harry took a long sip of his ale. “There are disquieting rumours doing the rounds about the dear captain. Word has it he’s virtually rolled up. Fell in with Duggan and crew. A bad lot,” Harry added in an aside to Toby. “But the last I heard, he’d been unwise enough to sit down with Melcham.”

  “Melcham?” Jack tapped a fingernail against his ale mug. “So Gurnard’s very likely up to his eyebrows in debt.”

  Harry nodded. “Very possibly over his head. And if Melcham holds his vowels, as seems very likely, his future doesn’t look promising.”

  “Who’s Melcham?” Toby asked.

  “Melcham,” Jack said, “is quite a character. His father was a gamester—ran through the family fortune, quite a considerable one as it happened, then died, leaving his son nothing but debts. The present earl, however, is cut from a different cloth than that used to fashion his sire. He set out to regain his fortune by winning it back from those who had won it from his father. Them and their kind, which is to say the sharps who prey on the susceptible. And he wins. Virtually always.”

  “The sharps can’t resist the challenge,” Harry added. “They line up to be fleeced, knowing Melcham’s now worth a not-so-small fortune. The catch is that he’s also won a lot of powerful friends—and paying one’s debts is mandatory.”

  “In other words,” Jack summed up, straightening in his chair, “Gurnard is in a lot of trouble. And once the news gets out, he’ll no longer be the sort of escort wise mamas view with equanimity.”

  “But not yet,” Harry said. “The news hasn’t hit the clubs. That was privileged information, courtesy of some friends in the Guards.”

  Jack nodded. “All right. So Gurnard has decided that the most sensible way to get himself out of the hole he has nearly buried himself in is to marry an heiress—a very wealthy heiress.”

  “Clarissa?” asked Toby.

  “So it appears.” Jack’s expression was as grim as Harry’s. “And time is not on his side. He’ll have to secure his heiress before his pressing concerns become public knowledge.” Jack turned to Toby. “Exactly how did he want this meeting arranged?”

  Toby had started to repeat the directions Gurnard had been at pains to impress upon him when the door opened and Ned walked in. Toby broke off in midsentence. Ned’s amiable smile faded as he took in Toby’s expression and Harry’s grim face. He looked at Jack.

  Jack smiled, a predatory glint in his eye. “What did Jackson say today?”

  Drawing a chair up to the table, Ned dropped into it. “I have to work on my right hook. The left jab’s coming along well enough.” Ever since Jack had introduced him to Gentleman Jackson’s Boxing Saloon, Ned had been taking lessons, having uncovered a real aptitude for the sport. His eyes slid around the table once more.

&nbs
p; “Excellent.” Jack’s gaze was distant, as if viewing some invisible vista. Then he abruptly refocused on Ned. “Strangely, I believe we may have found a use for your newly discovered talents.”

  “Oh?” Jack’s smile was making Ned uneasy.

  The smile grew broader. “You want to consolidate your position in Clarissa’s affections, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Ned admitted, somewhat cautiously.

  “Well, I’m pleased to announce that a situation has arisen which calls for a knight-errant to rescue a fair damsel from the unwanted attentions of a dastardly knave. And as the fair damsel is Clarissa, I suspect you had better polish up your armour.”

  “What!”

  It took another ten minutes to explain all to Ned’s satisfaction and by then Jack had been sidetracked. “You told all this to Sophie?” he asked, fixing Toby with a disbelieving stare.

  Toby looked guilty. “I couldn’t avoid it—she threatened to speak to Mama.”

  Jack looked disgusted. “Meddlesome female,” he growled, and he didn’t mean Lucilla.

  “I pointed out that we needn’t worry until the gala. If Papa returns before that, there’ll be no reason for Sophie to worry at all.”

  Jack nodded. “Well, don’t tell her anything more. We can take care of it—and the fewer complications the better.”

  Toby nodded, entirely in agreement.

  “But how, exactly, are we to take care of it?” Ned’s expression was grimly determined.

  Succinctly, assisted by helpful suggestions from his inventive brother, Jack laid their campaign before them.

  By the time he’d finished, even Ned was smiling.

  “ARGH!” Jack stretched his arms above his head, then relaxed into his chair. “At last I think I see the light.”

  Harry grinned. “Think Ned can pull it off?”

  The brothers were once more alone, Ned and Toby having taken themselves off with some vague intention of keeping a watchful eye on Clarissa during her afternoon’s promenade in the Park.

  “Think?” Jack replied. “I know it! This performance should land Clarissa firmly in his arms, relieving Sophie of further anxiety on the point and myself of the charge of overseeing that youthful romance once and for all.”