“He hadn’t . . .” She bit her tongue and placed the draft onto the desk, her mind working furiously. She didn’t know why she didn’t tell Dr. Lucas the truth. Mr. Verylan had no other clients but the late marquess and a bare handful of others, most of whom were deceased like her husband. And if she wasn’t mistaken, the bulk of the late marquess’s unentailed remaining estate, which had been willed to his nephew, hovered in the range of fifteen thousand pounds.
Her mind reeled with a dawning realization.
She was almost certain who the anonymous donor was. But it made no sense. Sebastian was notoriously impecunious. He’d reportedly had to leave the country for that very same reason. Everyone knew that he had been waiting for years for the marquess to kick off so he could inherit.
Could he have been telling the truth that day in the duke’s drawing room? That he would rather cut off his hands than accept the marquess’s money?
She’d not believed him—she’d not wanted to let herself believe him, though she had felt the passion of his words down to her toes.
Could she have been so wrong about him?
Shaken, she sat back in her seat.
Dr. Lucas’s brow furrowed in concern. “Are you well, my lady?”
“I am . . . a bit overwhelmed.”
“Do you know who this mysterious benefactor is?”
“Not for a certainty.”
Dr. Lucas frowned thoughtfully. “Yes, well, it doesn’t matter who gave us such a windfall, I suppose. Only that it is ours now to dispense as we wish.”
She gave him her best smile, shaking herself out of her thoughts. “And I suppose you have some idea how to accomplish this.”
“Since you ask, I do,” he said, smiling back. He rose and came around the desk. “But we can plot our next move later. I must make my rounds now. I’m afraid I must depart rather early this evening. I have an appointment I can’t put off.”
“Lady Blundersmith?”
He grimaced. “Her megrims are as feigned as her pockets are deep, but I shall never tell her I’m onto her.”
“You are quite mercenary, Doctor,” she scolded lightly.
“You have no idea.” He hesitated at the door. “You shall not stay too late? I confess I do not like the thought of you on the streets of Aldwych in daylight, much less night.”
She felt a surge of pleasure at his concern, mingled with her exasperation. Men, even broad-minded ones like the doctor, would always assume a woman incapable of taking care of herself. But she was fairly confident in the ability of her driver, Armstrong, to dissuade scoundrels from accosting her, and she was confident in the pistol hidden under her seat. Crime was rampant in the stews, which was hardly a surprise, but she wasn’t deterred by it. Nothing could be done to her that had not already been done to her by her family and Johann.
But she could hardly tell the doctor this.
“I shall just sort through this correspondence, and perhaps see how the staff is getting on. It should not take long. I thank you for your concern.”
He smiled at her, swept her a bow, and left the office.
Katherine took up the seat the doctor had recently vacated and began sorting through the papers on the desktop. Despite his skills as a sawbones, Dr. Lucas had no sense of organization when it came to matters of business. But even as she began ordering the stacks of work orders, bills, and receipts into tidy piles, her mind drifted back to the draft for fifteen thousand pounds, which was burning a hole through the locked drawer in which it sat, just a few inches to her right.
What had prompted Sebastian to do such a wild thing? Who had ever heard of anyone signing over one’s entire estate to a charity? Perhaps he had been overcome by a sense of remorse at the way he conducted his life, and this contribution was meant as a sort of penance. Or perhaps—and this was more likely, given what she knew of his character—he’d given away a fortune in a fit of pique—at her, for more or less calling him a blackguard when they last met. And he would do such a thing, just to thumb his nose at her. Like a little boy who, when scolded for not sharing a precious treat, reacted by taking said precious treat and throwing it away, as if to prove how little it mattered to him.
But it did matter, she realized. And none of these explanations seemed right. No, something more was afoot here, buried in the murky past Sebastian shared with his uncle. She had more questions than answers. Manwaring had never discussed his nephew with her, and none of the staff at Briar Hill, most of them having been there during Sebastian’s childhood, were willing to talk to her on the subject. The most she had been able to elicit from them was a pitying shake of the head, and something to the effect that “the young master turned out quite wild.”
An understatement.
She had been able to glean only the most basic facts. Sebastian’s father, Manwaring’s younger brother, had died in Paris during the Terror, but somehow Sebastian and his mother had found their way to Briar Hill. The mother had been French, and very unsuitable—an opera singer or some such—but Sherbrook had married her nonetheless, and the marquess had no choice but to accept her into the family. The mother had died when Sebastian was eight, leaving him under Manwaring’s guardianship. Manwaring seemed to have done right by the boy, sending him off to Harrow and Cambridge, and acknowledging him as his heir-apparent.
But then something had happened. A scandal at Cambridge, for which Sebastian and his bumbling compatriot, Marlowe, had been sent down. No one, not even London’s biggest gossips, knew what that scandal had been about. After that, Sebastian and Marlowe had joined the war on the Peninsula, and had stayed there for years, before showing up in London and turning it on its ear with their shocking exploits.
The simple explanation provided by the servants at Briar Hill, that he had simply “turned out quite wild”—which was not surprising, their eyes seemed to say, with the mother he’d had—should have been enough to explain his behavior. But she had a niggling suspicion there was more to the story.
She knew one thing beyond doubt: Sebastian had hated his uncle. And it was not merely dislike or contempt. It was the sort of hatred that was bone deep.
She sat back in her seat and closed her eyes, remembering the day when the late marquess had come face-to-face with his nephew, quite by accident, as they had strolled down Bond Street. It had been the middle of summer, the Season at its peak, and the marquess had joined her in one of their rare walks together. He’d been in a good mood, and had even been laughing at something she had said, when they rounded a street corner and nearly ran into Sebastian, who had been going the opposite way.
Sebastian’s face had drained of color as he came upon them, but instead of moving away, he’d stood his ground, a black scowl twisting his features, a wild light in his eyes as he stared at his uncle. Daring him to proceed.
She’d felt her stomach clench in apprehension, and when she’d glanced at her husband, she’d stopped breathing altogether. Never had she seen such disdain, such haughty contempt as he stared his nephew down. As if he could remove him from their path by the power of his glare.
But Sebastian had not budged from his spot on the pavement, as if his feet had grown roots, just as stubborn as his uncle.
In the end, the marquess had been the one to back down, turning her around and heading back the way they had come, never speaking a word.
The marquess had never gone out walking with her again.
Katherine sighed, rubbing her eyes. She had no business trying to descry Sebastian’s motives. She had no business trying to offer up excuses for him. No matter what had driven a wedge between himself and Manwaring, nothing could pardon his sins. He was irredeemable, and the sooner she accepted this, the better off she would be.
But that didn’t stop her from paying him a visit. She had a fifteen-thousand-pound reason, after all, and she wouldn’t be able to accept the money until she knew for sure what his
motives were. There was that old saying not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but she was unprepared to follow that advice. For there was that other saying about some things being too good to be true, and she could not help but think that sentiment was more applicable to this particular situation.
Everything about Sebastian Sherbrook, from his ebony curls to his ridiculous cheekbones and blue eyes, was too good to be true. This bank draft was doubtless no different. There had to be some unpleasant catch. And she was determined to find out what it was.
Chapter Six
In Which Our Hero’s Day Goes from Bad to Worse
SEBASTIAN GROANED AS buckets and buckets of villainous morning light poured through the bedroom window straight into his aching eyeballs. His manservant, Crick, had just taken it upon himself to shift the curtains back, the brute. He rolled over onto his stomach and stuffed a pillow over his head. The light was blocked, but the layer of goose feathers did nothing to drown out the sound of Crick whistling as he polished Sebastian’s boots or did whatever it was valets did at ungodly hours of the morning to annoy their employers.
Sebastian threw the pillow at Crick’s knotty head.
“Awake, are we, milord?” Crick said cheerily, slamming a mysteriously materialized breakfast tray down on the table next to Sebastian’s head.
Sebastian managed to shift the cobwebs out of his head long enough to pull himself into an upright position. Which was a mistake, as the effects of last night’s debauchery had settled themselves in for a long, painful stay in his brainbox. He squinted one eye open and frowned at Crick, who was smiling brightly at him. The utter blackguard.
When Crick smiled brightly, he resembled a banged-up bulldog. Not a welcome sight first thing in the morning.
“Go away. It’s damned unsporting of you to wake me up at such an hour,” Sebastian pouted hoarsely.
“It’s noon, milord.” Crick relished addressing him thusly since he had gained his title. Rather, he relished nettling Sebastian with said title, since he knew how much Sebastian loathed it.
“’Utchins were ’ere earlier, milord, wanted to inform you the waistcoats what you ordered was finished. But ’e says ’e woan give ’em over ’til you’ve settled yer account.”
Wonderful. Just wonderful. “What’d you tell him?” he mumbled.
“Tole ’im to stuff the bloody fings up ’is arse.”
“Good man.” Sebastian put his arm over his eyes. The sunlight was devilish bright for November.
“Then our Mr. Kale was come by.”
Sebastian groaned. Mr. Kale was the butcher down the road.
“And Mr. Blancett.”
Mr. Blancett was the local wine merchant.
“Stop lecturing me, Crick.”
“Wot? I’m not lecturin’. Just telling who called,” Crick said with mock innocence.
“If it weren’t such a damned bother to find a decent valet, I’d have sacked you long ago, Crick,” he muttered.
“Ye’d not find a pauper on Fleet Street what’d work for the wages you offer,” Crick retorted.
Crick was, of course, right. Perhaps even a bit generous in his criticism of his employer, since Sebastian couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten around to actually paying Crick’s salary. He was always pockets-to-let, unless he won at the tables, and, aside from last night, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had any luck in that arena. For a man who raised most of his funds by gambling, he was rather rubbish at it. If Crick had any sense, he’d find other employment, yet he’d stuck with Sebastian for years, rather like a barnacle on the hull of a sinking ship.
Crick had been his batman on the Peninsula, and after the war, he had offered his services as a gentleman’s gentleman, though neither one of them could claim to be worthy of such a title. Crick was under the odd impression that he owed Sebastian for saving his life at some battle or other. Sebastian had no recollection of these alleged heroics, having done his best to eradicate every last horrible memory of the war, but he had accepted Crick’s story and given him the post. He’d not expected Crick to last a week when the man discovered his low circumstances. Yet the man had stayed. He’d even followed Sebastian to the Continent, endured months of traipsing about France and Italy, and then months more dodging all sorts of trouble in the Levant.
Sebastian would never admit it to his face, but he didn’t know what he’d do if Crick ever decided to end their arrangement. Crick had pulled him out of more scrapes than he could count, and Sebastian definitely would not have survived the Levantine misadventure without him. The man hailed from St. Giles and was quite handy with his fists. And he knew every trick in the book when it came to dodging creditors, haggling with shopkeepers, and cheating at cards and dice.
Not that Sebastian cheated. He had some gentlemanly instincts left.
But Crick did, on occasion, manage to turn a few of his employer’s sovereigns into . . . well, more than a few . . . by means that were not completely honest, in the back-alley gambling venues he frequented. And Sebastian did not have any qualms about benefiting from said ill-gotten gains. One had to pay one’s valet, after all.
And eat.
There was that.
Now that he was the marquess, Sebastian supposed he was technically not entirely penniless. He had the estate in Derbyshire, and with a little elbow grease, it could be quite profitable, or so said Montford. But Sebastian recoiled at the very notion of visiting the ancestral pile quite yet. He could not face that part of his past.
As for the unentailed funds his uncle had left him, he had already seen they were redirected to a cause more worthy than updating his wardrobe. He had meant what he’d said to his dear lady aunt on the subject, though she had doubted his sincerity. Sebastian gladly accepted that he was somewhat of a scoundrel, but he had his fair share of pride and honor, and he could never accept an independent fortune from his uncle, not after what the man had done to his mother. And his damned hand.
The fact that the funds were to go to a charity for fallen women was, Sebastian thought, deliciously ironic and so damn fitting, given the circumstances of their falling out. He hoped his uncle was simmering with indignation in whatever dark circle of hell he’d landed.
But relinquishing the funds had left him precisely where he had always been, living in rented lodgings in a rather dodgy part of Soho, with nothing but his pianoforte, returned to him at last from its extended holiday at the duke’s, his wardrobe, and his very ugly manservant for company. Only now he was the Marquess of Manwaring.
Sebastian attempted a smile for Crick for the first time in two weeks. Though using the muscles in his face sent a bolt of pain through his temples.
“You’ll be needin’ the Cure, I take it, milord?” Crick asked.
Sebastian’s stomach lurched in revulsion at the thought of Crick’s restorative. It tasted like rotten eggs mixed with chalk and cat piss. It was the most disgusting thing he’d ever ingested, but it never failed to bring him around after a night of heavy drinking. The past two weeks had been a disaster of epic proportions, ever since he’d nearly kissed Lady Manwaring in Montford’s drawing room, so he had been imbibing rather heavily.
He was not exactly living up to his lofty goal of self-reformation.
“Make it a double, Crick,” he managed, before falling back against his pillow, feeling sick to his stomach and extremely sorry for himself.
Crick returned in short order, carrying a tall glass filled to the brim with a mud-colored concoction that frothed suspiciously at the top.
Sebastian pinched his nose and threw the Cure down his throat in one gulp. He had learned the hard way to get it over with as soon as possible without contemplating what was in it.
He did not want to know.
He shuddered and set the glass aside, then lurched out of bed to pour himself a glass of water to rinse out his mouth.
“That’s the damnedest, foulest shite, Crick,” he said, attempting to scrape the taste off his tongue with toweling. “I don’t know why I let you force it on me.”
Crick just rolled his eyes and began stropping the razor for Sebastian’s face.
Sebastian collapsed into a chair and scowled at his valet’s presumptuous preparations. “You seem to be under the mistaken impression I’m moving from my bedroom today.”
“Aye, milord. I can hear yer voice yesterday, afore you left for yer entertainments, still ringing in me ears. ‘Crick,’ says you, ‘I don’t care what condition I am in on the morrow, I am to be roused, revived, and set on my way by the noon hour.’”
“You do a horrible impression of me. Make me sound like I have a mouthful of marbles. And what do you mean I told you to wake me by noon?”
“I’m afraid you didn’t inform me of the particulars, milord,” he retorted loftily.
“Well, damned if I know.” Sebastian scratched his neck and belched, an action he immediately regretted, as the last thing down his gullet had been the Cure.
Crick gave a beleaguered sigh. “I believe ’Is Grace is expecting you for an appointment in Westminster?”
Sebastian groaned. Now he remembered why he’d gotten more obliterated than usual last night. Because this afternoon he had to face a gaggle of solicitors sent by Sir Oliver Blanchard, who was still determined to make his life a hell.
“Then scrape me, damn it, and brush out my black superfine coat. If I’m to be sued for something I didn’t do, there’s no reason for me not to cut a dash.”
“Right you are, milord,” Crick responded, lathering his cheeks.
An hour later, Sebastian was shaved, scrubbed, brushed, and turned out in his favorite black Weston jacket and new black Hessian boots, his cravat tied in an immaculate Mathematical—Crick had a surprisingly artistic touch when it came to his master’s toilette—and his watch fobs jangling gleefully from his black silk waistcoat. But for his cravat and lace-edged sleeves, his attire was unremitting black, which Sebastian thought appropriate, given the day’s appointment. He always dressed for the occasion.
Virtuous Scoundrel (The Regency Romp Trilogy Book 2) Page 8