by Sara Ramsey
Lucretia and Lady Maidenstone weren’t inclined to talk to him. But that only made it easier for him to hear Callista’s laughter — true laughter, the kind women in the ton were too well-bred to give voice to. Lucretia had made a whispered joke about Callista’s American manners to the man on her other side. The dandy had snickered.
Thorington hadn’t punched anyone since a youthful brawl at Cambridge, but he was tempted to relearn the skill.
He put Callista out of his mind and arranged the balls on the table. “Youth before talent,” he said, gesturing Rafe toward the table.
“Don’t be an arse,” Rafe said amiably.
But he took the chance to make the first shot. Not that it helped him; Rafe was no longer much for billiards. The ball didn’t fall his way.
Thorington lined up his stick. He saw the shot he wanted to make, saw how the ball would roll into the pocket. He couldn’t control his fortunes. But he could still shoot billiards.
Or so he thought. Just as he pulled back, Rafe said, “Callista Briarley is something, isn’t she?”
Thorington flinched, just enough to send the stick knocking into the table and the ball going wide.
“Unsporting,” he said.
“You know I’m no billiards player,” Rafe said.
Thorington watched Rafe line up his stick. His hands shook, just slightly, but enough to send the ball wide of its target.
Thorington nearly said that they didn’t have to play billiards. His nerves weren’t steady enough to watch Rafe’s shaking hands, to wonder whether there was something that might be done to steer him away from the path to ruin.
But Rafe had his pride. And Thorington didn’t have a plan to save him. So he picked up his stick again.
Rafe didn’t wait for Thorington to set up his shot before pursuing his line of conversation. “How many days do you think it will take to marry Anthony off?”
Thorington didn’t respond. He took his shot instead, sending a ball careening into the pocket. “The boy will come around soon enough,” he said as he moved around the table. “If I am forced to stay for the entire month of this house party, I will not be a pleasant companion for any of you.”
“Are you ever?”
“You wound me,” Thorington said, lining up his next shot.
His brother laughed. “If I live to see the day when anything wounds you, I’ll probably die from the shock of it.”
Thorington aimed.
“I saw the way you watched her at dinner,” Rafe said.
Thorington missed.
“Do you have a point in mentioning her, other than to distract me?” he asked.
Rafe smiled. “Seems to be working, doesn’t it?”
Distractions might ruin Thorington’s game, but they couldn’t improve Rafe’s. He missed again, with a muttered curse.
Thorington should have put his brother out of his misery, but he stood away from the table, leaning on his stick. “Shall we finish your discussion before I take my shot? Wouldn’t want to distract you from my victory.”
“Do you wish to discuss her?” Rafe asked.
“No.”
Rafe tossed his stick back onto the rack and tugged the bellpull instead. “Then we should discuss her. Over whisky, I think.”
Thorington stayed at the table, dissecting the angles, ignoring how Rafe’s too-eager tug of the bellpull seemed to tug at his own heart. “There is nothing to discuss.”
There wasn’t. Callista would be Anthony’s. That was the beginning, middle, and end of the story.
He just had to convince her. And Anthony.
And himself.
His shot went wide again. Why did the memory of her standing in the forest, in a skirt that belonged on the rag pile, choose that moment to return to him?
Why did he like that memory?
Why did he imagine stripping her out of that skirt? That she would laugh as he slid his hands over her hips, eager, happy? That she would look up at him with those infinitely dark eyes, eyes that would hold some secret promise for him? And then those eyelashes would flutter closed, and she would lean up so he could kiss…
No. Not the plan. Since Rafe had abandoned the game, he aimed another shot, wildly, inelegantly. The ball careened into the side of the table and launched itself over it, landing on the carpeted floor with a thud.
“I see your luck isn’t improving,” a voice said from the doorway.
Thorington would recognize that voice anywhere. He didn’t bother to look up as he retrieved the ball from the carpet. “Come to gloat, Salford?” he asked. “It’s unbecoming of you.”
“I’m in an unbecoming mood,” Salford said as he walked into the room. “I didn’t expect to see you at Maidenstone Abbey. This doesn’t seem to be your brand of mischief.”
Thorington shrugged, placing the ball back on the table. “I didn’t expect to see you, either. Shouldn’t you and Prudence be setting up house somewhere?”
They had married only three months earlier. Salford sighed. “My sister and her husband show no signs of vacating my London townhouse. And anyway, Prudence wanted to see Devonshire. I told her that Stonehenge is more impressive than the ancient rocks here, but she insisted.”
Thorington had said the same thing to Callista. He lined up another shot. “If you let her manage you like that, you’ll never control her.”
“I can manage her a damn sight better than you could have,” Salford said mildly. “Not that I need to, since she loves me, etcetera. But I forget myself. I didn’t come to gloat.”
Thorington didn’t miss this time. The ball fell into the pocket. “If you think I’m jealous, you should disabuse yourself,” he drawled. “I wish you very happy, you know. Prudence was nothing but a convenience for me.”
Rafe coughed. “Shall I leave this charming reunion undisturbed?”
“No,” Thorington and Salford said simultaneously.
They had been friends before — the best of friends, when they were both pursuing their studies at Cambridge. Neither of them should have been there; Thorington didn’t have the money for it, and Salford’s father wanted him to give up his books and learn how to manage the estate instead. But they’d shared a love of history that had fueled any number of late-night conversations.
Granted, whisky and women had fueled those conversations too.
Until the night they’d found an Egyptian dagger that was reputed to grant wishes. Thorington had accepted the consequences that came with his wish — the security for his family had been worth the effects of marrying Ariana. But the curse’s impact on Salford had been worse, and he’d spent the next decade searching for a way to break it.
In May, he’d finally found it.
And then he’d married Prudence — the woman Thorington had just decided to marry, in a purely mercenary scheme. By all accounts, they’d had a blissful summer together. In the meantime, Thorington’s fortune had drained away.
So it was little wonder Thorington wasn’t pleased to see his former friend at Maidenstone.
“Have you come to plague me anew?” he asked Salford. “Believe me when I say I don’t need any further annoyances at the moment.”
A footman interrupted them. Salford waited while Rafe ordered whisky, then shut the door behind the departing servant. “As I said, I didn’t expect to find you here,” Salford said. “But I’m glad to see you. I thought I might help.”
“Help?” Thorington laughed. “Do you have another cursed dagger in your possession? I’ll buy it on credit — rather low on funds at the moment.”
He wouldn’t have told anyone else about his finances, but Salford knew where he’d gotten all his money, and so Salford could guess that he’d lost it just as quickly.
Salford shook his head. “Cannot help you there, I’m afraid. But if it’s a loan you need, I could provide one.”
Thorington’s grip tightened around the stick. “I don’t need your charity, Salford.”
“I said a loan, not a gift. But you’ll get
a better rate from me than you will from the usurers in London.”
Thorington had never dealt with the money-mongers, even in his leanest days at Cambridge before his father had died. He’d come close when his oldest sister, Cynthia, had made her debut. Their father was still alive at the time, but he couldn’t — or wouldn’t — give her a dowry. Thorington had realized she’d never marry well without it.
But before he could borrow the money, and ruin himself in the process, he’d found the dagger. It had saved him from ruin, given Cynthia and Pamela the chance to make brilliant matches, given his other siblings every comfort…
He couldn’t have saved those who depended on him without the curse. And he couldn’t borrow enough money to make everything better now.
“It’s good of you to offer,” he said. “But the situation is too far gone for that.”
Salford paused when the door opened. The footman deposited the whisky, and Rafe made quick work of pouring glasses for all three of them as the servant left. Salford waited until his glass was in hand before speaking again.
“I wish you luck, old friend,” he said, raising his glass to Thorington. “But my offer will always stand.”
“Gav doesn’t want luck,” Rafe said, sipping his whisky. “He wants to end it all.”
Salford’s gaze turned sharp. “What do you mean by ‘end it all’?”
“I won’t commit suicide, if that’s what you mean,” Thorington said.
Rafe shrugged. “Near enough. Leaving us all here while you wallow in your poverty abroad sounds like a slow form of it, doesn’t it?”
He considered the glass in Rafe’s hand. His brother knew something about slow deaths.
Salford, meanwhile, didn’t know Rafe well enough to catch that subtlety. He was still frowning. “There must be a way to right your estate even without the curse.”
Thorington tossed back his whisky. “It’s exceedingly doubtful. If you want to help me, convince Ferguson that Anthony is the best match for one of the Briarley heiresses. I can’t save myself, but I can set up my siblings so that they are comfortable.”
“Ferguson isn’t easily persuaded. Especially by me.”
“He seems to have warmed to you,” Thorington said. “Help him warm to my brother.”
Salford sighed. But he eventually nodded. “I’ll do what I can. But the boy needs to charm Ferguson himself.”
“Anthony’s charming enough,” Thorington said.
Rafe snorted. “I’ve changed my mind. You’ll have better luck trying to find an Italian shepherdess.”
His comment broke the dark mood. And for the next hour, Thorington enjoyed something close to congeniality with them.
But the odd, rather pleasant feeling of enjoying himself wasn’t enough to fully distract him from his purpose. And so while they drank whisky and played billiards — the former well, the latter terribly — he schemed.
He had to secure Callista for his brother before anyone else won her affections.
And there was no time like tonight to start.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When she heard the scratching, she thought it was a rat.
“Of course there would be rats,” she muttered to herself. Lucretia had probably instructed the servants to release a plague ship’s worth of rats into the Tudor wing — it seemed like something her cousin would do.
But Callie had seen enough rats in the dockyards to be unconcerned. And anyway, it hadn’t awoken her. Despite her exhaustion, her cot wasn’t comfortable enough to lull her racing mind into sleep. Still, she turned toward the wall and tried to think of something else.
There wasn’t anything better to think of than the rat. What else should she think about? Whether her ships had been captured yet? Why Lucretia seemed to hate her? Why Thorington was so intriguing?
Definitely not Thorington. Never mind that she’d sensed him watching her throughout dinner.
Never mind that some perverse part of her wished she’d been seated next to him.
It was good that she hadn’t been. She might have tried to catch his gaze, to see if she could surprise a laugh out of him. She might have hung on his words, waiting to see whether he said something titillating. He was the most aggravating man at the party — but he was also the most interesting.
She was being a ninnyhammer. Thorington was the devil. And Ferguson had made it clear that she couldn’t win Maidenstone with him at her side.
She punched her pillow and vowed to sleep.
The scratching stopped — to be followed, a moment later, by the door handle turning. Only a servant would enter like that. “Did you bring me a warming pan, Mrs. Jennings?” she asked, still facing the wall.
Compared to the sweltering heat of Baltimore, Devonshire was frigid. But it wasn’t Mrs. Jennings who answered. “If it’s warmth you need, I might be of service.”
Thorington. His voice, dark and commanding, was already something she recognized instinctively, different as it was from all the hesitant second sons and half-grown whelps she’d met that night.
He stepped inside and shut the door before she could gather her thoughts. “Why are you here?” she asked, sitting up and pulling the covers around her.
“Still not willing to call me ‘your grace’?” he responded.
That winnowed out the pleasant feelings and brought her anger to the fore. “I’d sooner toss you into the harbor and declare independence again than do so,” she said.
He smiled. “Willful wench. Your strength might be commendable were it not set against me.”
She wasn’t frightened — in fact, if she were being honest, she was vastly intrigued — but she knew better than to encourage him. “My strength will remain set against you. Now take your leave before we’re ruined.”
Thorington placed his candle on the table and pulled the rickety chair forward. “I do not plan to ruin you at the moment. I came with a business proposition.”
Callie knew enough of the world to guess what he meant. A business proposition from a man of his status could only mean one thing. “I won’t be your mistress, no matter how much you offer.”
His frown was visible even in the shifting darkness. “I wouldn’t dishonor you like that.”
“What else would you offer?” she asked. “I can’t think of any other business between us. And Ferguson made it clear you’re not to be trusted. So you must be here to ruin me.”
Thorington sighed. “I am disappointed to find you have the morality of the middle classes. But you’re not screaming yet, so there’s that. I may be able to make an aristocrat of you after all.”
She gaped at him. Why had she wanted to sit by him at dinner? The man was mad. No, he was worse than mad. He was entirely amoral. And she was even more so — she was too wrapped up in delicious anticipation of his next move to be offended.
“Of course, I cannot make an aristocrat of you if you’re incapable of speech,” he said, examining his cuticles.
She couldn’t let him know how much he intrigued her. “I find I dislike you too much to speak to you.”
He laughed. “Charming. You and Lord Anthony have something in common. Marriages have succeeded with less.”
The speed with which he changed topics kept her off guard. “Lord Anthony?” she repeated.
“My brother. Similar to all the rest you met today, but distinguished by his au courant rose-colored waistcoat. Don’t judge him for it. He’s quite proud of the thing, for reasons that remain unfathomable to me.”
“I remember him,” she said. “But what do you mean about marriage?”
“He is the proposition. I want you to marry him.”
She gaped at him for another moment. Then her eyes narrowed. “I wish the scratching at my door had really been a rat.”
“You can’t do better than Anthony. He is eminently eligible as a match.”
“And you aren’t?” she asked.
She regretted saying it as soon as the words were out of her mouth. But he didn’t seem to t
ake any meaning from it. He leaned back in the chair, with a creak that could bring every Tudor ghost down on their heads. “I am not interested in marrying.”
She rubbed her fingers against her temples, trying to stave off the first throb of a headache. She forgot that she had been holding the covers up around her until Thorington cleared his throat. “No need to tempt me, Miss Briarley.”
“I’m sure you won’t do anything you don’t wish to do,” she said, leaving the covers bunched around her waist as she continued to massage her temples. “With your complete disregard for others, you’re likely incorruptible.”
“That is true,” he said. “Allow me to explain my position. I find you interesting, albeit untutored, and I wish to save you from the clamoring hordes. Better to arrange a marriage now than risk being caught up and ruined by someone else.”
“Is it really so likely? Ferguson put the odds of me being ruined at this party at one in three,” Callie said.
“Ferguson is a meddling fool,” Thorington said, with an oddly amiable voice for such a statement. “But he knows the marriage mart. I’d guess his odds are accurate.”
“You claim you don’t want to ruin me, and yet you’re in my room unescorted. Your logic is senseless.”
“You’re utterly alone up here. Anyone could ruin you if they knew where to find you. It only took me a guinea to buy the information from a footman, and I could have had it for less if I hadn’t had to buy his silence as well. Take it from one who knows — it’s better to arrange your own fate than to wait for someone to trap you.”
“And you think I should arrange to share my fate with your brother?”
Thorington leaned forward again. His tone had been negligent, but the intent in his posture was obvious.
“Marry Anthony,” he said softly, like a devil offering her a prize. “He has a good heart and a strong character. You won’t find a better man at Maidenstone.”