“Well, he’s very handsome.”
“That’s an important criterion for you?”
“Not really, it just means I won’t be indifferent while getting to know him.”
“Has that been part of your problem? Most of your beaus bore you?”
He was a little too good at figuring things out. He’d nailed that one right on the head. No, Robert hadn’t bored her, neither did Kendall. For that matter, she hadn’t spent a single bored moment in Devin’s presence, either, though he certainly wasn’t in the running, so what difference did that make?
She tsked. “Are you still working on your good deed? Don’t expect me to cooperate when I’ve asked you not to.”
“I can tell you already that Brigston won’t suit you.”
“You’ve been listening to gossip, haven’t you?” she guessed. “You know he’s too young to be a rake yet, but even if that’s his goal, it’s not a good reason to discount him—yet.”
“Of course it is.”
She chuckled. “No, it’s not. I’m quite familiar with rakes, have them in my family—well, I did. My own brother, Rafe, was definitely giving it a try before he married. And my cousin Rupert, there was no trying about him! Such a skirt chaser he was, but he’s settled into marriage, too, just this year. That just leaves his brother Avery, though actually, I’m really not sure if he’s trying to follow in his brother’s footsteps. It’s not exactly a proper subject to discuss with one’s cousin.”
“But perfectly fine to discuss with me?”
She managed not to blush. “I’m telling you why I’m familiar with rakes and why I don’t think Lord Robert is one. If anything, he’s just pulling the proverbial leg, to give himself a little risqué allure. The rest of the gossip is just jealousy gone awry tonight.”
“Whether he’s working toward becoming a rake or merely trying to impress the ladies with some bold behavior, the fact is the boy doesn’t want to marry and intends to do whatever it takes to avoid it. Do you really want to get tarred with his feather?”
The dance ended. Apparently, Devin didn’t want an answer to his last question, which was still on his mind, to go by his parting warning when he left her with her cousins.
“Brigston is heading for scandal and he’ll drag you down with him if you don’t keep your distance. D’you really want your father to pull in the reins and yank you back home when the Season’s barely begun?”
Amanda gasped, her face flaming with color. She didn’t doubt he’d said that loudly enough for Rupert to hear!
Chapter Eighteen
AT THE END OF the long evening, Devin truly hoped he wouldn’t have to attend any more balls before he found Amanda and Blythe their perfect husbands.
“Tired?” he asked Blythe on the way home.
“Not a’tall!” she replied excitedly. “That was such fun tonight. D’you think Lord Oliver found me attractive?”
“Like him, do you?”
She grinned. “I do. Once we started talking, we couldn’t stop. I’m just worried he might not be rich enough to satisfy my brother’s hopes for me. Is he? D’you know?”
“The Norse family is quite plump in the pockets, yes. Rest assured, William will be pleased as long as you are. Your happiness still comes first with him.”
“Then Oliver is perfect! I can’t wait to get home and tell Will about him.”
It sounded as if Oliver Norse was now the prime candidate for Blythe, though the man was currently hoping to win Amanda. But then all those young bucks were interested in Amanda right now, and only one might be lucky enough to win her, which would leave the rest disappointed, but still available.
He should have told Amanda that Brigston had revealed that his father had ordered him to marry her, but he was afraid she might find it encouraging. She probably would, too, the silly chit. Look how quickly she’d defended Brigston, scoffing at the malicious turn the gossip had taken.
She was holding out for love, so she was obviously a romantic. She seemed to think that love could conquer all, including confirmed bachelors of the rakish sort. That was all well and good, and who was to say Robert Brigston couldn’t fall in love with her? But the boy did want to experience more of life, and eventually, he’d get around to doing so, whether he had a wife or not. And there would go Amanda’s happy marriage down the drain. Why court inevitable disaster when Goswick would make her a fine husband, she already fancied him, and she merely had to develop a love for riding to win his heart? Simple, guaranteed, and no unnecessary scandal getting attached to her name.
No, Devin didn’t feel the least pang of guilt for making sure Amanda’s family would step in and warn her off Robert Brigston. To go by the frown on Rupert St. John’s face when Devin returned her to her chaperones, she’d be getting warned off tonight. Just to make absolutely sure, he’d jot a note to Lady Ophelia tomorrow as well, warning her that Amanda’s interest might be turning in a dangerous direction.
Better she hear it from her family than from him. He was going to have a difficult enough time dealing with her when she refused to cooperate. He didn’t want her thinking he’d joined the pack of jealous men.
Of course, he wasn’t jealous. Granted, he’d felt a brief moment of attraction to her while they’d danced due to her careless words. I prefer to do my riding with a comfortable seat beneath me. Did she have any idea of the image those words would conjure up in a man’s mind? Of course she didn’t. She was an innocent, and it wouldn’t be the first time he’d wanted a woman he couldn’t have.
Dropping Blythe and her maid at her house, he went inside to have a few words with William before he headed home. But even at that late hour Will hadn’t returned from his appointment. So Devin merely reminded Blythe to have her brother take her to join the promenade in Hyde Park tomorrow. An excellent opportunity for her to further some of the acquaintances she’d made tonight and possibly see Oliver Norse again so love could naturally bloom between those two without any help from Cupid.
The Pace driver returned Devin to Jermyn Street in quick order as there was barely any traffic at that hour. But as Devin stepped out of the coach, the man shouted down at him, “Careful, sir, something’s blocking the path to your door.”
Devin saw the obstruction and shook his head. At first glance, it looked like a rather large pile of rubbish, but then he noticed the leg sticking out. A drunk? Choosing to pass out in front of the Baldwin house? He moved to investigate. The driver asked if he needed help.
Devin bent down and turned the drunk over, then sucked in his breath. Without looking back at the driver, he yelled, “Fetch a doctor, the Pace doctor if you know who he is, or any doctor. Just hurry!”
Devin barely recognized his friend, he was beaten so badly. Blood was caked on his face and spattered over his jacket and overcoat. “Will!” Devin said, gently shaking his friend’s shoulder. “Will, what in God’s name happened?” But William didn’t answer. Devin placed his hand on William’s chest and was somewhat relieved when he felt his heart beating. Where the hell was Devin’s uncle’s coach that William had borrowed tonight? Surely Donald’s driver hadn’t left William here like this.
Devin carefully picked up William, afraid he might have broken bones, and carried him inside the house. The servants were abed at that hour, so he had no help carrying him upstairs. But he knew the servants would be stirring soon because Lydia’s dogs had noticed his return and were actually barking instead of just greeting him. He didn’t notice he was leaving a trail of blood behind him, but the dogs did.
Passing his aunt and uncle’s door, he shouted, “Uncle, I need your help!”
Devin took William to the spare bedroom and placed him on the bed, then turned to light a lamp. Lydia came in mumbling, still putting on her robe, but she gasped as light filled the room and she could see who lay on the bed.
She rushed forward, then drew back with another gasp. “Is that really your friend William?” she said incredulously. “Good Lord, someone tried to kill him?”
Donald entered the room. “What’s happened?”
“I don’t know.” Devin shook his head. “I found him lying near the steps in a crumpled heap, and there’s no sign of your coach. He did take it tonight, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he left not long after his sister dropped him off here and you departed with her.”
“Then he could have been lying out there all night, for all we know!”
“Actually, I did hear the dogs barking about a half hour ago,” Donald said. “Didn’t see anything though, when I looked out the window, but I confess, I was looking for a coach, not anyone at the front door.”
Lydia was worried about Devin’s frantic, increasingly furious tone and assured him, “He’ll be fine. He’s still breathing,” but glanced again at William to make sure. “Yes, he is.”
“He couldn’t even make it to the damn door!”
Lydia hurried around the bed and put her arms around Devin, hugging him. “I know he’s your friend and you love him like a brother. We’ll find out tomorrow what happened, but right now I think we need a doctor—”
“Already sent for.”
“Then let’s clean him up while we wait. You and Donald get his coat off while I fetch some water.”
They only got William’s arms out of the greatcoat and left him lying on it because he had groaned painfully when they moved him. The jacket was a much tighter fit, so they left it alone.
“I think we should cut off the rest of his clothing, otherwise we won’t know the extent of his injuries,” Lydia said cautiously as she returned with fresh water. “I’ve got scissors in my room, I’ll be right back.”
Devin said nothing. He was staring at what his aunt and his uncle hadn’t yet noticed—the wet, dark stain on the lower right side of William’s jacket. Devin had nearly missed it, too, on the black cloth of the jacket.
As soon as Lydia left the room, he ripped open William’s shirt and pulled it aside. Two wounds were low on his side, as if someone had come up behind him and stabbed him with a knife. Now Devin was afraid to move William at all, even to see if more wounds were on his back. Good God, William had never hurt anyone in his life. Who could have done this to him?
“That doesn’t look good,” Donald said as he stood beside Devin.
Lydia came back in, saying, “I think I heard a coach arriving out front.”
Devin didn’t glance up at her when he said, “I found two stab wounds, there could be more.”
She turned around immediately. “I’ll rush the doctor up here.”
The physician, who only lived a couple blocks away, didn’t know William; he’d merely been the closest the driver knew of. He seemed competent enough, but his manner was more suited to a mortician than a healer. He spent nearly two hours cleaning, setting, sewing, and bandaging William’s wounds and wasn’t optimistic when he finished.
“No broken bones, but he has lost a good deal of blood. If he survives the night, he might live. Just pray no fever develops. If an infection sets in, you might as well bid him good-bye.”
If Devin had said anything to the man right then, it wouldn’t have been nice. Donald gathered as much and quickly ushered the doctor out of the house. When Devin sent for Blythe in the morning, he would tell her to bring their family physician with her.
“I’ll sit with him if you want,” Lydia said from the doorway.
“No, you can spell me in the morning, or Blythe can. She’s going to be very upset when she sees him.”
“Did you send her word?”
“She had an exhausting evening and is probably fast asleep. There’s nothing she can do here tonight.”
Lydia nodded, but came in long enough to give Devin another hug as he sat wearily in the chair he’d pulled up to the bed where William lay. “He’s going to be fine. He’s a healthy boy. There’s no reason he can’t recover, now that the doctor has fixed him up.”
What had happened, and why? Devin wondered grimly. What the hell had Will got himself mixed up with?
Chapter Nineteen
“HOW WAS THE BALL?”
Devin blinked and sat forward abruptly. His friend had one eye open, at least half-open, and was staring at him. The other eye had needed a couple stitches at the corner, so it had been covered with an eye patch to hold down a bandage.
Shaking off sleep, Devin said incredulously, “You nearly die and all you ask about is a bloody ball?”
“I must look a mess, but I wasn’t dying. Hurts like hell, though.”
“You lost a lot of blood.”
“From what?” William said, fingering the patch over his eye. “It was just a beating. Wasn’t expecting it, but the bloody sod said he had to make a point.”
“What point?”
“That paying my debt on time was the only way to pay it. He pounded me a bit so I wouldn’t forget again.”
“You were nearly killed because of a debt?” Devin exclaimed. “Who the hell did you borrow from?”
William sighed. “The same chap I borrowed from at the end of the summer for Blythe’s wardrobe. Got his name from my footman, who said the bloke wouldn’t need collateral like my bank wanted, and he was right. I had no trouble with that debt. I was paying it off nicely. So last month before the Season got under way I went back to the bloke to borrow a few more pounds for Blythe’s dowry. But then one of his thugs came by the house yesterday demanding a payment on that loan. Not even a month had passed yet! But he claimed I was told that a larger debt would require more money to be paid back on it and sooner. Bloody well don’t remember being told that.”
“A setup? Are they crooks?”
“I’m beginning to wonder that m’self. But what’s the bloody point of borrowing money if I have to pay it right back? Had I known, I wouldn’t have signed another note.”
Devin lifted William’s head to get a few sips of red wine down his throat before he sat again. “You should have come to me first. You never should have gone to an under-the-table moneylender who doesn’t make his terms clear.”
“You don’t have that kind of blunt, not without selling off half of your breeding stock, which would cripple your new farm, and I wasn’t about to borrow from your uncle.”
“I’m not that pinched, Will. I’ve got assets other than my farm.”
“Assets that you never mentioned?”
Devin shrugged. “I had a small inheritance from my mum that I mostly used to start the new farm—”
“Yes, I know.”
“But there was a house, too, that I don’t want. I just haven’t got around to disposing of it yet.”
“Ah, your mum,” William said carefully. “You don’t still hate her for dying on you, do you? A natural reaction for a youngun, but you should have outgrown—”
“I barely remember her.”
That was a lie, but Devin had never talked about his mother with anyone other than his uncle, and he wasn’t going to start now. Besides, he didn’t think Will would understand. The kind of pain-induced rage he felt when he thought about his mother—what she had done and what had been done to her—couldn’t be outgrown. It certainly hadn’t gone away, it seemed to be embedded in his soul.
But William was an understanding chap and didn’t press. Instead, he said, “Well, you won’t be selling anything on my account. Besides, this was my problem and only a temporary one. Once Blythe is well married, I’ll borrow from her husband and pay him back as soon as I find a rich wife for m’self.”
“Which you should have done to begin with, instead of trying to get her married off first.”
“It’s the bloody timing, Devin. I was looking before she turned eighteen and simply had no luck. Should’ve asked you for help with that, but I didn’t think it was going to be so hard to find a rich wife I wanted. Met a few ladies I would have been honored to wed, one I even liked a little too much, but they were just as poor as I am.”
“I do know someone who I think you’ll like,” Devin said. “Should have introduced you sooner
, but you seemed so determined to get Blythe shackled first that I was afraid you’d let the opportunity slide by.”
“You’re probably right. But now that Blythe is eighteen, I can’t ask her to sit back and wait. You know it makes no difference how old we men are when we wed, but it’s a bloody big thing to a young woman. She just doesn’t know how pinched we really are, and I don’t want her to know. I don’t want her accepting the first proposal she receives just to help me out, when she might not even like the chap. Would you do that to your sister if you had one?”
“You borrowed to get her decked out for the Season. The invites are coming in for her. Your plan was already in motion. Why did you make it worse by borrowing even more?”
“We needed a dowry for her. Can’t have her going into a marriage with nothing.”
“Many do exactly that these days. Dowries lost their importance at about the same time arranged marriages did. It’s what these Seasons are all about, a means to get young people together so they can make their own choices.”
“I can’t deny her a dowry, even if it isn’t de rigueur. She has to feel she brings some worth to the table.”
It was hard to argue with simple pride. “How much did you borrow?”
“Not much, just a few hundred pounds.”
Devin shook his head. “You’ll have to give it back. Nothing is worth dealing with people who could do something like this to you.”
William closed the one eye with a sigh. “I agree. Really didn’t see this coming.”
“So when did you get stabbed? Before or after your face was kicked in?”
“Stabbed?” The little color that had returned to William’s cheeks after drinking the wine drained away. “I don’t recall that, but it couldn’t have been while I was being pummeled. There’s no reason for them to try to kill me. They won’t be getting their money back that way.”
“Yet you were stabbed twice in the lower right side of your abdomen, and by the looks of it, from behind.”
Let Love Find You Page 12