Chivalrous Rake, Scandalous Lady. Mary Brendan

fellows will take up the offer. Walters tells me she’s still a beauty, if a bit stand-offish and getting on in years.’

      ‘She’s only twenty-two,’ Marcus mildly protested, making more brilliant a knowing glint in his uncle’s dying eyes. Marcus looked at the ceiling, casually repeated, ‘So which other gentlemen have been approached to take Wyndham’s ward off his hands?’

      ‘Matthew Hambling and Philip Duncan are contenders. Neither, so I hear, have a notion to take on a wife at present. But Stephen Crabbe has my money on getting past the post. I remember the two of you nearly came to blows over the girl.’

      Marcus glanced away to where the doctor was sitting in a chair, his head bowed towards the hands clasped in his lap as though he was dozing.

      ‘I don’t think she had a hand in it either,’ Solomon remarked. ‘Wyndham’s after her inheritance, you know. She’ll be penniless before the ink dries on the marriage lines. And if Crabbe thinks Wyndham’ll settle a dowry on her he’ll be disappointed.’

      ‘I know he only wants her money.’ A mirthless smiled moved Marcus’s mouth. ‘Yet Theo Wyndham is arrogant enough to think he’s concocted a convincing tale of onerous moral duty.’

      ‘I rather liked Miss Jemma Bailey.’ The earl’s quiet opinion drew Marcus’s eyes immediately to him. ‘I liked her mother too and never held with all that scandal-mongering talk about the Baileys years ago. Eccentric, indeed they were. But one cannot condemn a couple for wanting to escape the hell of a bad marriage.’ Solomon fingered the rim of his glass. ‘Do you recall when we visited Paris some years ago and spotted Veronica Bailey strolling by the Seine with her Count?’

      Marcus nodded.

      ‘It was the first occasion I’d seen the fellow close up. Handsome devil, wasn’t he?’

      Again Marcus gave a nod.

      ‘I thought he had a look of you about him,’ Solomon suggested. ‘Different colour eyes, of course.’

      ‘Are you saying you think he took an interest in my mother, too?’

      Solomon guffawed so abruptly it made him cough, but he flapped away the doctor who’d sprung, startled, from his chair.

      ‘You always did make me laugh, you know, m’boy.’ He sobered, took a deep breath. ‘I think you know what I mean so I’ll say no more on it. I recall that Veronica was a good-looking woman and still in her prime when she went off with him. I can understand why John Bailey felt so bitter.’

      ‘He was hardly in a position to moralise considering he’d kept Mrs Brannigan in comfort before and after his marriage to Veronica. The tragedy of it was for their daughters rather than for them. When Jemma Bailey made her début she was not always wanted everywhere because of the scandal they’d caused.’

      ‘I recall you tried to compensate for that by showing everybody just how much you liked her. You took very little notice of the family’s calamities or its sullied name.’

      ‘It made no difference to me what problems her parents had had. It was she I—’ He bit off the words and finished quietly with, ‘It made no difference to me.’

      ‘Ah…but it would make a difference to a lot of people—people who marry for status and convenience rather than love,’ Solomon said forcefully, leaning forwards to emphasise his point. The exertion made him collapse back on to the pillows, and with a start Marcus was on his feet, his soothing fingers at his uncle’s face, moving back the wispy white hair from his forehead.

      Silently the doctor had come up behind. He tried to ease the glass from his patient’s rigid grip, but the Earl refused to let it go.

      ‘Pull me up!’ Solomon insisted weakly, trying to use his elbows to manoeuvre upright in the bed. ‘I’ll finish m’drink before lights out or be damned.’

      Marcus gently eased his uncle’s wasted body up to nestle on feathers once more.

      ‘Off you go now,’ Solomon sighed out. ‘Robertson will see to me.’

      ‘I’ll stay…’ Marcus croaked, attempting to swallow a burning lump lodged in his throat. He knew the time now was very near.

      ‘No!’ Solomon gasped. A smile quivered on his purplish lips. ‘No,’ he repeated gently. ‘Some things a man must do by himself. Dying…choosing a wife…’ He gulped back the small amount left in his glass and, satisfied, gave it over to the doctor. Then he lay back and closed his eyes. ‘Go…’ he told Marcus on an exhalation. ‘Marcus!’ the faint, urgent cry arrested his nephew at the foot of the bed. ‘From the moment you came to me,’ Solomon ejected the words with difficulty, ‘your future happiness was the purpose in my life.’ He sucked in a ragged breath. ‘Now our journey together is done…I go on alone.’ He panted rapidly, striving for the breath to finish, ‘But you know where happiness lies…’

      A groan of pain seemed to issue from deep within his uncle’s being and it made Marcus instinctively rush back to clasp one of his freckled hands in support.

      ‘I shall make him as comfortable as I can,’ Dr Robertson promised gravely. ‘Please, you must go or he will fret and try to struggle on if he thinks you still here. Mrs Paulson will stay until the end.’

      Marcus nodded, his eyes feeling gritty and afire with grief. He stooped to kiss his uncle on both sunken cheeks, then in instinctive obeisance he lowered his forehead to touch together their brows.

      Chapter Five

      ‘If it wasn’t for the respect I had for the old Earl I’d go right now and offer the new one his choice of weapons.’

      Theo Wyndham continued gingerly fingering the bruise on his neck. It had been almost a week since Marcus Speer had turned up in Hanover Square and gripped him by the throat whilst informing him in awful tones what he thought of him, and what he’d next do to him if he had reason to return.

      The gentleman to whom Theo had directed his remark was lolling against the window frame, ogling a housemaid’s swaying posterior as she scrubbed the step of a house opposite. Theo’s ludicrous boast caused Graham Quick to snort in derision, but his attention remained riveted on the girl’s jiggling buttocks. Finally he turned to slant Theo a laconic glance. ‘I suppose you do know that Speer has winged at least three fellows who’ve annoyed him.’ Graham’s heavy-lidded eyes dropped to the livid mark on Theo’s neck. ‘God only knows where he’d aim in your case.’ After a last leer at the buxom servant, who was on her way to the side of the house with her bucket, Graham turned to face Theo with an impatient sigh. ‘It takes you an age to get ready, dear chap. Are we off to White’s some time this afternoon…or not?’ A pinch of snuff was deposited on the back of a foppish white hand and immediately sniffed into a fastidious nostril.

      In Graham’s opinion Wyndham was fortunate not to have on his person a more severe sign that he’d incensed one of the gentlemen he’d solicited to marry his cousin. Graham unashamedly flouted convention, yet he wasn’t sure even he would have found the effrontery to solicit proposals from fellows who had suffered the ignominy of being spurned by a saucy schoolgirl. In a drawling tone he told Theo so.

      ‘Nothing wrong with a fellow trying to get his ward wed,’ Theo testily defended himself. ‘It’s my duty, like it or not, to get her settled before she gets any older. Besides, there was only one of them took it badly.’

      ‘And with good reason, considering he’d just announced his betrothal to the sweetest heiress imaginable,’ Graham interjected ironically. ‘Miss Cleveland has a very tempting dowry.’

      Theo’s complexion turned florid and he muttered something about being unaware of any of that. The stale lie only served to elicit another snigger of disbelief from Graham.

      In exasperation Theo tugged this way and that the linen he was winding about his neck. At last he seemed satisfied that the intricate bow at his throat hid the worst of the damage and he turned from his reflection to give Graham