Page 29 of A Lady’s Guide to Scoundrels and Gentlemen (The Harp & Thistle #1)

T he Harp & Thistle was on track to reopen in autumn, and truth be told, it was all Dantes looked forward to. He glanced around at the mess, observed the fine haze of renovation dust over every surface, and tried to imagine it clean and filled with people and loud noise. The place was going to look a lot nicer than it had before, no longer the hole-in-the-wall it once had been, but polished and handsome. There would be more intricate wood detailing throughout, the dingy floor was going to be replaced, the old, banged-up furniture would be new. The front of the building had already been redone and they’d added in larger front windows to entice people inside. That had been Victor’s idea, and Dantes thought it was ingenious.

Everything was going to be brand new, shiny. Even his old flat he refused to set foot in, as it made him think of Vivian.

He could still envision her standing in his living room, smiling at the photo of his parents, smiling up at him as he stood so close, the fireplace crackling and warm before the whole place lit up and burned.

It had been three weeks now since Vivian had left for Brighton and he still had not heard from her. Her last word was the letter Heaton had given him.

Not one letter, not one telegram, had arrived since.

Dantes had, of course, written to her after a few days of silence, at first trying not to sound desperate or worried.

No response.

Dantes swiped a finger over the dust upon a table, rubbing the grit between his thumb and forefinger. His heart and mind felt like they were covered with that same dust.

Dantes’s dreary thoughts were interrupted when Victor came through the front door and thumped a large catalog on the table Dantes stood beside. A cloud of dust puffed out to the floor. “In having some free time,” Victor began talking without looking at Dantes, instead thumbing through the catalog. “I’ve been looking into other liquor distributors. I discovered this one—their prices are better, and the liquor is better too. Basically, we’ll be paying the same price for higher quality.” He pointed to an example.

“That’s good,” Dantes said flatly.

Victor looked up and observed his brother for a long, studious moment. “Have you heard anything from Lady Vivian today?”

“No.” Dantes clenched his jaw and recalled this morning, when his worry had seemed to snap him into madness. “In an act of furious desperation, I went banging on the servants’ door at her house. Her butler, Heaton, answered red-faced, like he was ready to kill me. He was even holding a pistol and behind him, the housekeeper had a rolling pin raised.”

Victor made a choking noise.

Dantes shot him a deadly glare. Though he could only imagine what the poor maids and footmen had thought with his incessant banging.

Of course, when Heaton had opened the door to the mad banging, Dantes had keeled over. He still hadn’t recovered his full strength and it was easy to find himself winded and light-headed.

“And?” Victor said. “I’m assuming you found out she isn’t dead like you feared if you’re sitting in front of me, calm.” He looked Dantes over. “Sort of.”

Dantes ran his hands through his wild hair. “I asked if something had happened to Lady Vivian.”

What had truly occurred was Dantes had turned into a wild man, spouting a bunch of nonsense to the butler about cliffs and carriage accidents.

Vivian had said the cursed words and then immediately left. He hadn’t had a chance to go with her to keep her close and safe, hadn’t had an opportunity to even warn her to keep extra care of herself. She’d said the words and was gone.

Initially, he had considered going after her, even though traveling would take its toll on his body, especially three weeks ago. But at first, he thought she needed space after their argument.

Eventually, he began to think she had disappeared, or had been killed.

That was when the nightmares had returned.

Vivid nightmares of Vivian falling off cliffs into the ocean, a crazed burglar kidnapping her in the middle of the night. Drowning. Run over by a carriage. Getting struck by lightning.

Tewksbury marrying her instead.

He wrote letters, begging her to be careful. Begging her to reply. Even just once. Just once! All he wanted was one reply and he’d leave her be.

Victor crossed his arms and drily replied, “I’m sure when you talked to her butler you were a paragon of calm and not the growling, pacing madman you’ve been for nearly a month now.”

Dantes ignored this. “She is alive,” Dantes said, pain stabbing his heart. “Heaton hears from her. He gets responses when he updates her about the work being done at the house.” He puffed out a breath. “And then when I came here today, I received a notice from the bank. Vivian sent over the money to cover Winthrop’s debt to me. I immediately went to the bank and told them to refuse the money, but they said it didn’t work like that.”

Victor frowned at this. “She paid the debt?”

“Yes.” Dantes’s voice was dark. “The final thread between us has been cut.”

That action spoke plainly to him. She hadn’t disappeared, she hadn’t died. Vivian refused to speak to him after his ridiculous behavior, then she’d given him the money owed, though he hadn’t fulfilled his part of their bargain.

He hadn’t ended up helping her find a husband. Maybe she had done that all on her own with Tewksbury. Tewksbury wouldn’t have blown up at her over a three-thousand-pound gift. The man likely had never raised his voice in his life, either. He seemed like that kind of chap.

Giving Dantes the debt money gave her a clean break from Dantes.

She wanted him out of her life.

There was another stab to his heart as he thought about this.

Victor came around the table and gave Dantes an awkward pat on the shoulder, his biggest attempt ever at showing affection. “Three weeks really isn’t that long. Maybe she’s been busy. Or ran out of ink.”

Dantes scoffed and collapsed into a chair.

“I think it’s odd you haven’t heard anything from her. Nothing at all.”

“Because she wants nothing to do with me. She couldn’t make that more clear!”

Victor gave Dantes an unamused once-over, crossing his arms across his chest.

Dantes stepped around the table with hands clenched. “Keep looking at me like that, I have no problem taking you down.”

Victor gave him a sharp laugh. “You can’t, not after everything you went through last month.” Narrowing his eyes, Victor solidified his stance to show he meant business. “This is exactly why I refuse to involve myself with women, Dantes. Men become bumbling fools. I know somewhere deep in that head of yours, the logical solution is screaming at you. But your idiotic and emotional heart is drowning you, and that logic, in grief. Pathetic.”

Dantes clenched his teeth.

“Lady Vivian apologized in her final letter, did she not?” Victor was referring to the letter Heaton had given Dantes. “Did it not sound like she was still interested in salvaging…whatever you two are?”

“Yes, but—”

“She doesn’t strike me as the type of woman who would put you through this. If it was really over, she would tell you that with her own words. She wouldn’t make you guess.”

“That’s exactly what she’s doing, though.” Dantes growled with frustration. “What in the blazes am I supposed to do, then, since you seem to know everything?”

Victor tapped his head and his eyes became wide. “Think, Dantes.”

Dantes again collapsed into a chair, but this time, he buried his face into his hands. What could he possibly do now? The grief of losing Vivian was too much and it clouded his mind, his world.

After taking a deep breath, though, he tried to move focus away from the way his heart felt. He then put his focus over to his mind, to logic, and pushed aside the clouds until the answer came through like a beacon.

He tensed.

What if he went to Brighton to confront her?

Christ, he could imagine it now. How idiotic would he look banging on her front door, calling to her like some desperate mongrel whimpering to get into the house, after who knew how many unanswered letters and telegrams? Her butler would chase him across the yard shouting at him to take the blasted hint.

What a fool he would look. And be.

But…did he care? Did he really care that much about what they all would think of him? Was it more important than seeing her and getting answers?

Before he could even begin to start considering his next move, Ollie came bounding in through the door talking quite rapidly.

“The weirdest thing just happened, and I had to rush right over!” Ollie angled over to the dusty table Dantes and Victor were beside. “I went to the National Gallery to check on the paintings—”

“Oh? Interesting. You went there yesterday to check on everything, too,” Victor said with evident boredom.

“And the day before.” Dantes couldn’t help but grin at this. Giving Ollie a hard time still gave him a bit of amusement.

Ollie shook his head in evident disbelief at them. “Forget about that. While I was there, Miss Sparrow got a letter from Lady Vivian.”

“What did it say?” Dantes demanded immediately as he leaned forward.

“Give me a second to breathe, will you? Lady Vivian dismissed Miss Sparrow from the project and wrote how since you hadn’t responded to her letter asking if you wanted the project to continue, she assumed that meant you did not. I told Miss Sparrow something wasn’t right, to keep at it, and came here immediately.”

Dantes’s heart began to race. “I never got a letter from Vivian, much less one asking me about that.”

Ollie pointed a finger at him, gloating like he had solved a riddle. “Exactly.”

“I’m not understanding.”

“Something is keeping your correspondence from reaching each other.”

Dantes swallowed as a cautious glimmer of hope, of happiness, winked through the gloom surrounding him. But what could possibly keep them from reaching each other?

The front door flung open again. The brothers froze when Lady Litchfield, steam practically shooting out of her ears from beneath a yellow flowery hat, came storming in and over to Dantes, her two children trailing behind. She was significantly smaller than him, but glared with a furious stare, daring him to go against whatever she was about to say. Her daughter, meanwhile, crossed her arms at Dantes with a similar frown while her son stepped up to Victor, craning his head all the way back to stare up at his height, licking a lollipop as he did this. Victor, however, did not notice the child’s awe. Victor stood as rigid as a statue, his gaze fixed upon the boy’s mother, and nothing else.

“You!” Lady Litchfield shouted at Dantes before covering her children’s ears by pulling them against her and putting her hands to each uncovered ear. They protested and flailed, but she was stronger than she looked. “I expect this kind of behavior from Bernard!” She released them with a huff. “But you…you mean, mean man!”

Dantes exchanged a look of bewilderment with Victor. “What in the Devil are you talking about?”

Lady Litchfield yanked folded paper out of her silver reticule and shook it at him. “I received this frantic six-page letter from Vivian telling me she has sent you”—she hastily unfolded the letter and skimmed through—“ thirty letters since her arrival at Summerwood, countless telegrams, all begging you to respond to her and you couldn’t be bothered to do that! See this page?” She turned it to him and shoved it against his nose. “Those splotches on the ink are tear marks. Tear marks !”

Dantes was sure that up until this moment, he couldn’t have felt any worse. He’d been wrong. “I haven’t received any correspondence from her, Lady Litchfield. Not one shred.”

Lady Litchfield stilled, but the anger quickly returned. “You expect me to believe that? No, you’re a coward who can’t admit you’re too scared to commit! You are a liar! I should have seen it in you. I’m an expert in that now, you know!” Her voice was now as frantic as Vivian’s letters.

Victor jumped in. “He’s not lying, and I know this because he’s been grousing about it incessantly.”

Lady Litchfield turned her attention to Victor, swallowing when their eyes met. But then, she lifted her nose. “He’s not? Are you sure?”

“Yes. My brother has been sending constant letters to Lady Vivian since she left. I’ve seen him send them off. And he’s never received a single response.”

“Oh, dear.” Lady Litchfield bit her bottom lip, evidently trying to figure out what to say or do next. “Then you don’t know yet.”

“Don’t know what?” Dantes responded with a jolt of fear.

Lady Litchfield explained what she had learned in Vivian’s letter about the solicitor’s error. “I didn’t even know she had to get married to keep the inheritance. But she’s in a panic now because she only has one week left to get married and thinks you don’t want to marry her anymore. And if she doesn’t get married, even to someone else, everything relinquishes to…” Lady Litchfield froze and all the color drained from her face. “Oh, no.”

“What is it?” Dantes and Victor said at the same time.

The marchioness’s hand flew to her mouth, and she had to take a moment to herself. “If Vivian doesn’t get married, everything goes to Bernard.”

Dantes could see the answer in her paled face. Bernard had, somehow, found out about the solicitor’s mistake and prevented Vivian and Dantes from contacting each other.

Fury like Dantes had never felt before burned through him like wildfire, and he clenched his fists to keep calm. “Winthrop has something to do with this,” he said through gritted teeth.

Lady Litchfield glanced at her children, who were fighting over who could jump highest and closest to Victor’s shoulder and were not paying attention to the conversation at hand. “I don’t want to say that outright but you know his history.”

“It would make the most sense,” Ollie added. “I mean, her other letters are reaching their destinations. It’s only Lady Vivian’s and Dantes’s letters that are missing.” Ollie briefly explained to Lady Litchfield about the restoration project and the letter to Miss Sparrow.

“And the children get daily letters from Bernard,” Lady Litchfield added while tapping her chin. “Oh, I guarantee that scoundrel has something to do with this!” Frustration ground at her voice. She looked back to Dantes. “What are you going to do?”

Lady Litchfield’s theory made a lot of sense. It could even explain Vivian’s unexpected debt repayment. Vivian thought he was ignoring her and maybe she did see it as cutting the final thread between them, but not in the way he had originally thought.

But how could she think something like that? Didn’t she know how much he loved her? Was it not obvious?

He asked these questions out loud.

“Of course it’s not obvious to her, you fool.” It was Ollie. “First of all, you haven’t been getting her letters, either, and have been worrying about the same thing.”

All right, Ollie had a good point.

“And second, you refuse to tell her you love her—what’s she supposed to think about that? I don’t care if she says she’s fine with it, she’s not. No one would be.”

“You’ve never told her you love her?” Lady Litchfield blinked. “I don’t understand. She told me in the letter you were going to get married.”

“That was the plan.”

But Lady Litchfield shook her head at him. “Believe me when I say you shouldn’t marry someone you don’t love. Do you love her?”

“Of course I do!” Dantes shot back, frustrated by this incredibly personal conversation being tossed around out in the open.

“Then why haven’t you told her?”

Victor gladly took the opportunity to explain Dantes’s belief the phrase “I love you” was cursed for him. Of course, Victor explained it in a way that made Dantes look like a complete cad.

“You must be joking,” Lady Litchfield said after hearing the truth. “I’m sorry, but if words can be cursed, I refuse to believe that such wonderful ones, said in truth, could ever cause physical harm.”

“You would think.”

“No, I know ,” she corrected him as her children began pulling at her skirts in boredom, causing her to wobble in response. “Curses aren’t real, Mr. McNab. You’re wrong, and that’s that.” She nodded her head once. And as the children worked together to pull on one side of her with a single hard yank, she nearly toppled over. Victor quickly caught her as she yelped and looked up at him red-faced. Victor furrowed his brow while searching her face. The marchioness pushed off of him and took two shaky steps back. After a brief hesitation, she then turned away to wave her children off with a scolding. Victor gave his vote on the matter by giving Dantes an infernal smirk in support of Lady Litchfield.

“Sorry, Dantes, but it really is ridiculous and not true in the least.” Ollie joined in with further support. “It’s always been a coincidence you lose people after they said those words. You haven’t lost me so far, have you? Despite what we went through? You’re merely afraid of losing her—anyone is afraid of losing people they care about. But if you’re truly that worried about it, give her a painting blessed by a priest or something and put it in her house. I don’t know.”

Dantes laughed at this. A painting blessed by a priest? Now that was ridiculous. But Ollie’s suggestion made the gears in his head start turning. And as the thought took hold, the despair that had enveloped him these past few weeks began to crack and fall away, only to be replaced by raw excitement. He looked back up, his decision solidified. “I’m leaving in two days.”

Lady Litchfield responded. “Are you sure you want to wait that long? That’s rather close to her deadline.”

“Yes.” Dantes offered no further explanation. He had to take care of something before he left.

“Very well.” Lady Litchfield blew out a breath as she helplessly watched her son rub renovation dust on his sister’s pristine sleeve. “I’m worried about Vivian, so I’ll join you on your trip.”

“I’ll join as well,” Victor added, offering Dantes a grin of arrogant bemusement. “I want to witness this all for myself.”

Not wanting to miss out, either, Ollie was going to join, too. “It’s not like this place will be open, and they’re going to be tearing down the old bar anyway.” He said this at Victor’s disapproving frown. Victor, however, didn’t argue any further.

Two days later, the McNab brothers and Lady Litchfield boarded the steam locomotive that would travel to Brighton. As Dantes watched the city shrink and disappear outside the window, he thought about his life. His future. As long as everything went exactly as planned, the next time he saw London, he would have a wife. A passionate, beautiful, caring woman. A woman he admired, a woman who somehow saw past his scars. And, the best part of it all? She loved him exactly how he was.

He only hoped nothing more would get in his way.