He pushed the thought of her away. As he had for five years.
“Let me find my feet before I get myself leg shackled.” He gestured vaguely and drew in a deep breath. “I must go to Edgecombe. Whatever I find at the estate is mine to sort out.” He pointed at Iverson and then Tremayne. “I will repay you both. The dukedom’s debts could not have drained my accounts entirely. I maintain others. I may be a reckless pleasure-seeking fool, but I know a man shouldn’t put all his coin in one purse.”
Iverson stared at him for a long silent moment, assessing him, then turned his back on Rhys and filled a glass from the drinks cart. Several glasses. One for each of them.
“Safe travels, Claremont,” Iverson said as he handed Rhys a half-filled tumbler.
“I have some notion of what awaits you.” Nick stepped forward to take his glass and lifted it in a toast. “Good luck, my friend.”
Rhys swigged back his finger of whiskey and savored the trail of heat racing from his throat to his middle. He needed a bit of fire in his belly. Nothing but his own selfish indulgence had motivated him for years. Exhaustion still nipped at him, worry still rode his shoulders, but he managed a grin.
“They do say I’m a very lucky man.”
Chapter Two
August 1848
Hillcrest estate, Essex
With a satisfying swipe of her pencil, Arabella Prescott struck another task off her list as she strode toward the dining room. Her family’s long-planned house party was imminent, and Bella’s list had been a long one. She loved helping her mother with party preparations, or any project that involved order and structure.
She should have set herself to conquering her list earlier, but she was so close to finishing the first draft of her book. She’d barely left her room in days. Just a few more details and she would be ready to consider submission to Mr. Peabody, the London publisher her mother had introduced her to the previous summer.
The past months had brought a reviving change. After a series of failed Seasons, she no longer had to worry about social rounds or spending months in London while her parents put her in the way of every eligible nobleman on the marriage mart.
There’d been no talk of matchmaking all summer, and she could finally focus on her dream of publishing the conundrum book she’d been adding to off and on for years. The project had nothing to do with duty or her parents’ expectations. Some in society would no doubt frown upon her harboring ambition for anything other than marrying well, but the book mattered to Bella. She needed to prove to herself that she could be something more than the doted upon daughter of Lord and Lady Yardley. A book of cerebral puzzles and logic problems written by a nobleman’s daughter might be difficult to sell, but she was determined to try.
Now that her parents accepted her status as a spinster, her choices were her own. She only needed to get through a fortnight of being sociable to family friends and then her time would be her own too.
In the dining room, Bella discovered the staff had outdone themselves. Porcelain and silverware glinted in the late afternoon light and a centerpiece of flowers scented the air. Peonies, lilacs, and freesia blooms overflowed the edges of etched silver bowls.
She circled the table, moving from chair to chair to admire the perfectly arranged place settings. She loved symmetry, evenness, order. Every plate and glass and implement were in their right place. She let out an appreciative sigh, but then the name cards caught her interest. Stark white rectangles with gilded edges and names written in a bold hand. She examined the next and the next. The more she looked, the further her heart dropped.
Gripping the back of one polished wooden chair, she scanned the table again, her mind whirring.
Bella had always been good at solving puzzles. From childhood she’d excelled at mathematics and all the logic problems her governess devised to test her. She’d become so adept at unwinding riddles, she’d even published a few of her own in ladies’ magazines.
The Puzzling Miss Prescott, one newspaper called her during her third Season. Of course, the society columnist had been referring to the mystery of why she’d refused five offers of marriage rather than her analytical mind.
Studying the cards the servants had carefully arranged in front of gleaming plates, she could see the trap she’d stumbled into, as unsuspecting as a rabbit rushing headlong into a blackberry bramble.
“Too many men,” Bella whispered to the empty room.
Her heart lodged itself in the back of her throat. Her parents were still scheming to marry her off.
After four failed Seasons, she thought it was over, that they understood. But it seemed their patience had worn thin. She knew they were frustrated every time she refused a suitor or an invitation to London. But she couldn’t regret her decisions. The five men who’d offered for her would have made dreadful husbands, and she would have made them a miserable wife. Her parents could have insisted, but they never had. They’d married for love and wished for her to do so too.
She’d accepted that she wouldn’t, but clearly they hadn’t given up hope.
When her parents suggested a house party to celebrate her twenty-third birthday, she’d been pleased. Not that she wished to make a fuss about her birthday. Since the debacle of a garden party five years past, she’d wanted the date to pass with little fanfare.
But this—plot—had never crossed her mind.
Gentlemen. A bevy of them. Four prospective suitors. They had to be. The only ladies who’d be in attendance were Bella, her mother, and her cousin Louisa. Since Louisa wasn’t yet out, she couldn’t be the object of this munificence of men.
At the sound of someone clearing their voice, Bella spun to find her cousin hovering at the dining room threshold.
“How angry are you?” Louisa stepped inside the room and slid the pocket doors closed behind her.
Bella pressed two fingers to her temple. “You knew about this and said nothing?”
Louisa blinked and her blue eyes widened. Rather than answer, she plucked nervously at a satin ribbon on the front of her gown.
Four years younger and far more eager for romance than Bella had ever been, Lou was sweet natured and rarely prone to duplicity. They were as close as sisters, and Bella understood why she’d gone along with the plan. Bella even sympathized with her parents’ desperation, but she had to make them understand.
“Where are they?”
“I saw your mother in her sitting room a quarter of an hour ago. I suspect they’ll be in the drawing room greeting guests soon, but I’ve just come from there and no sign of them yet.”
“I need to speak to them before this all starts.” Bella hugged her notebook to her chest, pushed her pencil into the crook above her ear, and swept past her cousin.
Louisa called out a soft hesitant “Good luck.”
Marching toward her mother’s sitting room, Bella rallied logical arguments in her mind. Explanations. Rationales that would help her parents accept that she was not meant to marry. Some girls, like Louisa, stacked all their hopes on matrimony, but Bella didn’t entertain those dreams anymore.
By the time she stood outside her mother’s door, she knew exactly what to say, but she hesitated with her fingers on the handle. Voices came from her father’s study across the hall.