Dedication
To those who suffer disorders of mood
Chapter One
“If you are so unforgivably clodpated as to challenge William Chastain to a duel,” Ash Dorning said, “I will shoot you in the arse myself, Tresham. And lest you forget, I was raised in the country. My aim is faultless.”
“You won’t shoot me,” Jonathan Tresham replied. “Lady Della would never forgive you for wounding her devoted brother. Besides, I’ll need you to serve as one of my seconds.”
Ash poured two fingers of brandy from the better stock kept behind The Coventry Club’s bar. At this midmorning hour, the cleaning crew had already come through. The room was tidy and deserted, and a perfect place to talk sense into Tresham.
Or try to. He passed Tresham the medicinal tot and poured one for himself. “If you add fuel to the flames of gossip by involving Lady Della’s name in a matter of honor, you will be the brother she never forgives. As far as polite society is concerned, the Haddonfield menfolk are her siblings, and your involvement in the situation would only cause the wrong kind of speculation.”
Lady Della’s mother and Tresham’s father had had an affair while married to other people. The tall, blond Haddonfields affectionately referred to the petite brown-haired Lady Della as their changeling, but anybody who took a close look at Della and Tresham side by side would see an uncanny resemblance.
If those people had any sense, they’d speculate silently. Della was fiercely loved by all of her siblings and by any number of relatives and family connections.
Della was loved by Ash, too, not that his sentiments signified.
“Why did she do it, Dorning?” Tresham took his drink to the roulette table and gave the wheel a spin. “Why run off with Chastain? He’s a bounder and an inept card player, and worse yet, a rake.”
Because Ash was a co-manager of The Coventry Club, he knew exactly what Tresham meant. The more heavily William Chastain lost, the more heavily he drank, and the more heavily he bet. Ash had a fine grasp of probabilities, while Chastain had a fine grasp of the brandy decanter.
“To young men just down from university,” Ash said, “Chastain offers a certain shallow-minded bonhomie. He looks the part of the man about Town. He pays his debts, or we’d not let him back in the door.” Though how he paid his debts was something of a mystery.
“His damned father must be covering his markers,” Tresham muttered. “Last I heard, Chastain was engaged to some French comte’s granddaughter, so his papa is doubtless keeping Chastain out of trouble as best he can until the vows are spoken. I really do want to kill him.”
So do I. “That won’t help. Chastain traveled no farther with Della than Alconbury. If he wants to live, or ever sire children, he’ll keep his mouth shut. The whole business will remain a private regret for both parties.”
By daylight, the game room looked a little tired, even boring. The art on the walls depicted good-quality classical scenes—scantily clad nymphs, heroic gods—but nothing too risqué and nothing too impressive either. Without the click and tumble of the dice, the chatter of conversation, or the sparkle of the patrons’ jewels, the room was simply a collection of tables and chairs on thick carpet between silk-hung walls.
Any Mayfair town house would have been at least as elegant. But that was the point: The Coventry’s elegance was comfortably bland, not showy, not distracting. The focus of the patrons was to be on the play and on each other.
Ash’s focus was on Della Haddonfield, whom he had given up trying to forget months ago.
“Chastain drinks when he loses, and he loses nearly every time he plays,” Tresham said, wandering between the tables. “Sooner or later, he’ll drink too much and start wittering on about the elopement with Lady Della. He spent half the damned night with her in that inn, Ash. I should kill him for that alone.”
“I know, Tresham,”—God, do I know—“but Della apparently went with him willingly. Would her family tell you if that wasn’t the case?”
“I have no idea.” Tresham perched on a dealer’s stool and took up a deck of cards. “I hate this,” he said, shuffling the deck with casual expertise. “Chastain is an affront to good society and somebody needs to take him in hand.”
Somebody needed to put out Chastain’s lights. “Deal me in.” Ash took up a stool at the same table. “Has it occurred to you that Della might be smitten with Chastain? She might be heartbroken that Chastain’s father interrupted their elopement.”
“My wife’s theory is that Della chose Chastain because he’s nothing more than a handsome lackwit. Della could manage him without looking up from her embroidery hoop. She’s an earl’s daughter, so Papa Chastain and Mama Chastain would eventually reconcile themselves to the match.” Tresham gathered up the cards and set the deck in the middle of the table. “I shall trounce you at cribbage.”
Ash produced a cribbage board from the shelf beneath the table. “You don’t believe Della is smitten with Chastain?”
“I know she isn’t. She once mentioned Chastain to me when I drove out with her. Her tone was less than respectful.”
Ash cut for the crib and pulled the low card. “Feelings can change.”
“Not those feelings. Della expressed pity for his sire and shared the opinion that Chastain will bankrupt the family within two years of gaining control of the Chastain fortune. She’s right.”
Play moved along, with the cards favoring Ash. His leading peg was halfway around the board when his brother Sycamore sauntered in, looking dashing and windblown in his riding attire.
“That is the good brandy at Tresham’s elbow,” Sycamore said, pausing to remove his spurs. “Since when do we give away the good stuff, brother mine?”
Ash picked up his cards to find another double run, his third of the game so far. “We are generous with Tresham because he needed a tonic for his nerves.” As had Ash. “I’m beating him soundly.”
Sycamore peered over Tresham’s shoulder. “William Chastain needs a sound beating. Who’s with me?”
Tresham put down his cards. “What have you heard?”
Sycamore could be tactful—about once every five years—and then only out of a perverse impulse to surprise his older siblings.
“Chastain was at his club last night, lamenting that his French bride refuses to cry off, despite the failed elopement with a certain Lady Delightful.”
Tresham was on his feet so quickly he knocked his stool over. “I will kill him, slowly, after protracted torture. I will geld him and cut the idiot tongue from his empty head. By Jehovah’s thunder, I ought to ruin his father for siring such a walking pile of offal.”
“If you do ruin him,” Sycamore said, taking a sip of Tresham’s brandy, “please do it here, so the club gets a bit of the notoriety and ten percent of the kitty.”
“Tresham, you cannot,” Ash said, getting to his feet. “You cannot so much as intimate that Chastain’s wild maunderings have any connection to reality or to Della, and you most assuredly cannot strut about all but proclaiming that her ladyship has an illegitimate connection to you.”