“We’ve yet to list the jewels,” Colin said. You never finish a job without counting the take. The boys’ advice seemed appropriate when Win Montague and a sum of money were involved.
“That will take another hour,” Montague protested. “It’s the middle of the damned night, MacHugh.”
The duke paused in his ciphering. “You’ll think me old-fashioned, Montague, but indulge me, please. In this house, we observe proper address when wearing our evening finery. Yonder Scot is Lord Colin until he’s back in his riding attire. Her Grace put that rule in place nearly thirty years ago, and it’s served us well.”
What a splendidly gentle rebuke. Montague’s ears turned an equally splendid shade of red.
Rosecroft spoke up for the first time. “We divide the jewels into four piles, each of us making a list of one pile, and each checking the work of the man to his right. We’ll be done in fifteen minutes.”
“Excellent notion,” the duke said, which settled the matter without Colin having to call Montague out for attempting to abscond with the jewelry.
The lists were an impressive display of the generosity polite society was capable of. Rings, necklaces, cravat pins, even the occasional pair of cufflinks or earrings sat in glittering heaps about the table.
“We shouldn’t sell all of this at once,” Colin said, when the lot had been inventoried. “We’ll get a better price if we parcel it out a little at a time.”
“How do you propose we keep it safe while we’re parceling it out?” Win retorted.
“The banks will keep it safe,” Colin said. “And until we can get the lot of it to the bank, we have a strongbox at the orphanage, to which only you and the headmaster have the combination.”
Colin did not, and wouldn’t ask for it, not while Win was playing dandy in the manger as chairman of the board.
“I don’t like having so many valuables stowed among those children,” Montague said, collecting the jewels into another sack. “But I suppose it will have to do. Now might I take this lot to the orphanage, Lord Colin?”
“Don’t be daft,” the duke said, rising. “You will take his lordship and Rosecroft, as well as three of my largest footmen, and the Windham town coach. Half the thieves in London probably got wind of this party, and are lurking among Her Grace’s hedges to waylay you. A man who’s hungry enough will steal from orphans. We don’t have to make that crime easier to commit.”
The duke shook hands all around, and Colin was soon ensconced in a capacious crested coach with a small fortune and Win Montague’s small-mindedness. Rosecroft had chosen to ride up on the box, and Colin might have joined him except for the covetousness he’d seen in Montague’s eyes as the jewels had been counted.
“I had a private chat with Miss Anwen,” Montague said as the coach pulled out of the mews.
Colin had seen them walking out to the terrace, and he’d seen Anwen return to the ballroom alone not ten minutes later. He hadn’t found time to ask her about the conversation.
“Is your discussion any of my business?”
“I’m making it your business, MacHugh. The lady admitted that you’ve pressed her to accept your addresses. That is the height of bad form, and I expect better from even you.”
Ach well, then. Whatever else was true about this private chat Montague was so fixed on, Anwen had let the fool live. Colin took his inspiration from her gracious example.
“I trust you will enlighten me regarding particulars of my bad form,” Colin said, “as you have so generously done on many previous occasions.”
Montague propped his foot on the velvet-cushioned bench opposite him. “Anwen can’t put you in your place, you idiot, because of the family connection, and because she must face you across a conference table every time she attends one of our meetings. The orphanage means a lot to her, and her family means even more. If she tells you to pike off, as she ought, then she creates awkwardness on every hand. A shy little mouse like Miss Anwen can’t do that.”
A shy little mouse, who’d told Colin to pike off for the sake of the boys, the first time he’d threatened their well-being. Montague was lucky Anwen hadn’t parted his cock from his cods.
“So you’re running me off on her behalf?”
“I will make it plain to the lady that she has options, MacHugh, plainer than I already have. Let me make something else plain to you.”
In the dim light of the coach lamps, Montague’s complexion was sallow, and fatigue grooved his features. His golden good looks would soon give way to a saturnine countenance, if the French disease didn’t do worse than that.
“Do go on,” Colin said.
“I am chairman of the board of directors for the House of Wayward Urchins,” Montague said. “The building is rotten with rising damp, and by rights should be condemned. The safety and comfort of the children must be my foremost concern, and if you continue to bother Miss Anwen with your rutting presumptions, I’ll have the building razed to the ground. Every effort will be made to find other accommodations for the children, but the boys would be safer in the streets than at a ruin of an orphanage.”
Montague was concerned with the safety and comfort of only one person—himself. That he’d try to come between Colin and Anwen was merely selfish and arrogant. That he’d threaten the well-being of children to effect his claim was vile.
“You’d put the children back on the street, if I paid my addresses to Anwen Windham?”
“Go back to Scotland,” Montague said. “She doesn’t want you, and neither does anybody else. I have tried to be decent where you’re concerned, but you don’t fit in, you’re not welcome, and you impose on the good graces of your betters every day you remain in London.”
The cold, calculating temper Colin had relied on to see him safely through battle rose, and stayed his hand when he might have slapped a glove across Montague’s face.
“Your advice, as always, bears consideration. I am touched, Montague, at the tenderness of your regard for innocent children. I’m sure Miss Anwen would be too. I take it you intend to offer her marriage?”
Winthrop expelled a gusty sigh that bore the rank scent of overimbibing.
“One doesn’t march up to a gently bred woman and haul her off to the altar. Even you knew to start with a request to pay the lady your addresses. I will observe every jot and tittle of protocol, lest any think less of Miss Anwen for seizing hastily on the first proper offer to come her way.”
“And what about Mrs. Bellingham?”
“None of your bloody business, though you’ll stay the hell away from her too, MacHugh.”
Colin had known the building was a problem, and he’d given Anwen his word he’d keep the children safe. That wasn’t a new challenge. If Winthrop had the orphanage condemned, then the time to ensure each boy was in a situation suited to him was being ripped away.
That was a problem because these boys had been tossed about too much already in their young lives. The idea that Winthrop Montague would pitch the children into the street if Anwen refused his proposal was arrogance of a magnitude that eclipsed mere sin and flirted with evil.
“You’re not smitten with Miss Anwen,” Colin said after the coach had rattled along for some minutes. “Why marry her?”
Montague smiled, and such was the smug self-satisfaction in his eyes that he should have been tasting the air with a forked tongue.
“The poor dear has to marry somebody, as do I. Our kind grasp what marriage is and is not about. I don’t expect you to understand, but I’m doing you a favor, MacHugh. You’d make her miserable and regret the match within a year.”
Colin let that masterpiece of self-deception remain unanswered. Montague had at some point come to believe his own handbills regarding the privileges of his station. Whatever he wanted, he was entitled to have, even a woman who’d shown no interest in him. Whatever he believed became fact, despite any evidence contradicting such a contention.
Were he not the son of a wealthy, titled Englishman, Montague wou
ld be a bedlamite.
But he was the son of a wealthy, titled Englishman, and enormously well connected in polite society. Until Colin—who was enormously without connections—had done proper reconnaissance, had at least a few hours’ sleep, and had thought the matter through, he’d keep his own furious counsel.
* * *
“You are the sole defendant of the sideboard this morning?” Anwen asked.
Elizabeth sat alone at one end of the breakfast table, and a trick of sunlight had turned all the highlights in her hair to molten gold. Sipping her tea, she looked like a cross between the English spinster in training and some fantastical creature from one of Mama’s Welsh fairy tales.
“I wanted to review the new invitations before Aunt got hold of them,” Elizabeth said, eyeing a stack of correspondence near her plate. “The house parties are already trying to wedge themselves onto the calendar.”
Soldiers probably volunteered to serve with a forlorn hope in the same brave, stoic tones.
Anwen pulled out the chair at Elizabeth’s elbow, because Elizabeth had taken the place at the foot of the table—the duchess’s seat—where the light was best at this hour.
“You could visit Megan in Scotland, Bethan. Charlotte would happily come with you.”
Elizabeth poured Anwen a cup of tea and set the toast rack before her. “I could visit you in Scotland, you mean? And Megs, of course. Your card party was a smashing success, Wennie, and all that remains is for Lord Colin to speak his vows with you.”
More bravery. Anwen was abruptly reminded that all might be coming right in her world, but Elizabeth and Charlotte would be left with not one younger sister married into a ducal family, but two.
“You might ask Megan about Perthshire’s lending libraries,” Anwen said. “If they are in anything less than excellent repair, you could put them to rights in no time.”
Elizabeth was passionate about lending libraries, of all things. Anwen had overheard Cousin Devlin remark that at least dear Bethan didn’t crusade for temperance.
Cousins could be idiots.
Elizabeth tidied the stack of letters. “Was this how you felt when all and sundry prescribed plasters and nostrums for you when you weren’t ill, Wennie?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t forget to sugar your tea,” Elizabeth said, setting the sugar bowl near Anwen’s teacup. “To be unmarried is not an illness, such that desperate measures must be taken to stop its course. The tipsy bachelors haven’t chased me through anybody’s gardens for a good two years, and if I’m patient, I will eventually have my own household.”
For the first time, Anwen heard not determination when Elizabeth spoke of her eventual independence, but more of the stoic bravery of the doomed infantryman.
“At least at the house parties,” Anwen replied, “the ladies and gentlemen are present in comparable numbers. I’ve kept up with many friends that way.”
One or two being many, some years.
“It could be worse. Nobody is throwing a house party for the sole purpose of getting me engaged. The Duke of Haverford’s sister is apparently to endure that indignity.”
Anwen applied a generous portion of butter to her toast. “I’ve wondered why Lady Glenys is yet unwed. She’s a decent sort. Not prone to cattiness or gossip, and not silly. I’ve heard another theory about Haverford’s house party.”
Colin had passed this speculation along.
“Do tell, because I’ll likely be forced to attend. Any pretext to journey into the wilds of Wales will meet with Mama’s approval.”
Most of Wales was wild, from what Anwen had seen of it. Also beautiful. “The gentlemen speculate that Haverford’s sister is throwing the house party in hopes that His Grace will find a bride. Mama would be ecstatic if you caught the attention of a Welsh duke, my dear.”
Anwen would be happy for her sister too. Elizabeth needn’t marry the fellow to enjoy what ducal attentions might do for her spirits, after all.
Elizabeth took a slice of cold, plain toast from the rack. “A duke is the last sort of husband I’d accept. I’ve seen what a duchess has to put up with—no privacy, no rest, very few real friends, one political dinner after another. I’d go mad.”
The right duke would be worth a little madness, so was the right Scottish lord.
“Do you know Haverford?”
“I cannot claim that honor. He votes his seat, I’m told, but other than that, he lurks in his castle. Why is it a man can lurk in his castle, but a lady isn’t permitted the same pleasure?”
A castle in Wales sounded a bit lonely to Anwen, but then, anywhere without Colin would be lonely.
“Don’t you want butter on that toast?”
Elizabeth stared at the toast from which she’d just taken a bite. “I forgot butter. Perhaps I’d best go back up to bed and try starting this day over. There are at least four house party invitations in this pile of mail. I’ve considered declining them and signing Aunt’s name to the note.”
“That is desperate talk.” Though Anwen had been desperate to save the House of Urchins. Why shouldn’t Elizabeth be desperate to save her freedom? “Do you suppose Haverford might feel as unwilling to marry as you do?”
Elizabeth took another bite of dry toast. “Dukes must marry. That’s holy writ. He needn’t be faithful or even loyal, but he must marry.”
“Maybe he’d rather not,” Anwen said, appropriating Elizabeth’s toast and slathering butter on it. “Maybe he lurks like a dragon in his castle because he’s not keen on finding a duchess. Maybe Lady Glenys has turned down all offers because she doesn’t want to abandon her brother.”
Elizabeth ignored the toast on her plate and regarded Anwen severely. “Listen to me, sister mine. You will accept Lord Colin’s proposal of marriage, and you will waft away to the Highlands with him on a cloud of connubial bliss. You are not to prolong your engagement or put him off in hopes that Charlotte or I will bring some duke or other up to scratch. Megan is happy, beyond happy, and I want that for you too.”
For a retiring spinster, Elizabeth could be ferociously dear. “Colin and I are agreed that a short engagement will be best.”
Elizabeth picked up the toast. “Like that, is it? Anwen, you little hoyden. I’m proud of you.”
Anwen was proud of herself, but wished her sister might have been just the smallest bit envious.
“Be proud of Lord Colin. He’s not the average London dandy trolling for an heiress.”
“While trolling dandies are about all I can look forward to if I let myself be dragged to these house parties.”
“Say no. Refuse to go. We’re no longer six years old, such that our cousins can scoop us up bodily and deposit us in the nursery when we’re bothersome.”
Elizabeth munched her toast in silence, while Anwen helped herself to eggs and ham from the sideboard. She was in good appetite this morning, and looking forward to sharing happy news with the boys.
While Elizabeth feared falling into the clutches of a Welsh dragon.
“I should return the mail to the library before Aunt rises,” Elizabeth said. “You won’t tell her I was spying?”
“Don’t be daft. I’m on my way to the House of Urchins and you haven’t yet left your bed.”
“You are the best of sisters. I will miss you.” Elizabeth rose, collected the letters, and left the parlor at a near rush. Her toast remained on her plate, so Anwen added jam and finished it in a few bites.
Elizabeth’s situation was troubling—Anwen had rarely seen her eldest sister reduced to tears—but Bethan was the equal of any duke, and whatever else was true about Haverford, no scandal attached to his name. The only fact Anwen could dredge up about Julian St. David, Duke of Haverford, was that—like a dragon—he’d inherited a family tendency to hoard a certain object.
Perhaps Elizabeth had forgotten this about the St. David family. His Grace, like all the dukes of Haverford, was an avid collector of…books.
Chapter Fifteen
&nb
sp; According to Colin’s note, the sum that had been turned over to Hitchings in the dead of night had exceeded Anwen’s most ambitious prayers. The Duchess of Quimbey had wagered an antique pair of rings given to her grandmother by the first King George, and a competition of sorts had ensued, involving all manner of small items of jewelry.
“At next year’s event, I think we should try for more duchesses than dukes,” Anwen said. “Her Grace of Quimbey might have started a tradition.”
Lady Rosalyn lifted her skirts as they walked through the orphanage’s garden. The day was chilly and damp, and yet, in Anwen’s heart all was sunshine and roses.
“Her rings were hideous, weren’t they?” Lady Rosalyn replied. “Winthrop said the whole heap of gewgaws was of inferior quality, but there was so much of it Hitchings wasn’t sure where to stow it all. I have that problem with my bonnets and reticules. It’s very vexing.”
“The duchess’s gesture was magnificent,” Anwen replied, and the rings had simply been more ornate than present fashion favored.
“If your charity card party means polite society earns praise for discarding unattractive baubles, I will applaud you as a genius,” Rosalyn said, snatching her skirts away from a thriving border of lavender. “I do wish I hadn’t had quite so much of that delicious punch.”
Her ladyship had lost heavily, and with a gracious unconcern that had earned her many compliments from her opponents.
“I wish we’d thought of a charity card party sooner. Uncle Percival said he’d mention the idea at his club as a quarterly event. The House of Urchins is only one small institution amid many that deserve assistance.”
Rosalyn stopped and stared at the door as if, in the absence of a liveried footman, she wasn’t certain how one opened such a thing.
“Must you be so relentlessly good, Anwen? I will drop you if you don’t at least spill punch on your bodice or snort when you laugh.”
She sounded half serious.
Anwen opened the door and let Rosalyn precede her through. “I’ll do my best to spill strawberry punch all over my favorite fichu, but before you drop me, can we let the boys know they won’t be freezing to death next winter?”
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