Page 20

“Friendship and enmity have the same source: interest.”

—Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom

P eregrine was both surprised by her choice, and also not.

Given free rein to ask a single question, it would not have been the one he would have chosen in her place.

But Charity had been buffeted by some of the same winds that had shaped his own life.

Of course, she would want to know why Marian Fitzroy would seek to punish her over ancient history.

He, however, had some experience in knowing how little comfort the truth could bring.

“Yes, I know it,” he told her softly. “But I ask you if you are sure you want to know? No amount of quiet can stuff the truth back in once it is out, and it is not an answer likely to bring you any peace.”

He could just see the bare outline of a wry smile as they passed another lamp.

“How fortunate for us that I am not seeking peace. Gaining an understanding is my aim. I already know our mamas sought the same man during their season. But this goes beyond jealousy, and I never got a satisfactory answer from my mother. Especially… afterwards.”

Peregrine knew the story that anyone else would tell her: that when Lady Vanessa made her debut, she had turned every head, including the young Lord Cresswell’s. Choosing Lady Vanessa over Lady Marian, in the context of the ton’s usual criteria for marriage, made perfect sense.

“Your father was, I have been told, the catch of the season,” he began.

“He had everything. Youth. Virility. Independence, with no need to marry for a position or purse. A distant connection to the throne itself. Despite the fact your mama had been declared incomparable by the Queen, by all accounts, it was my mother that Lord Cresswell preferred. They suited one another. Lord Cresswell and my grandfather were deep in negotiations to arrange their engagement, and it had been all but concluded. And then… your mama and grandmother conspired together to trap Lord Cresswell in marriage.”

“I suspected there was something more sinister to it than spite.” She wrapped her arms around her middle again. “And so your mother was forced to make a different match to an older man.”

“With the season nearly over, Grandfather decided to… encourage her to settle with my father, Robin, Lord Fitzroy, yes. As marriages went, it was… not a very happy one.”

There was a long silence as she thought that over. “Such terrible consequences from a single choice.”

And she knew not a tenth of it. But why spoil what remained of her blissful ignorance with tales of his father’s murder? And if they were going to bring old grievances to air…

“If you did not know any of this, then I want to know the real reason why you spurned me the night you learned my name.”

He could practically feel the regret emanating off of her, that she had agreed to this game and was now caught out. As far as subtlety went, this was not his finest hour. But time until they arrived back at her home was short, and there would never be a better opportunity to demand this answer.

“There is not something else you would rather ask me?” she evaded, bringing her fingers up to pinch her brow again.

The barest trace of annoyance crossed him. “At the moment, no. You say it was not about my title, but my curiosity is unsatisfied.”

“It is a humiliating story, Perry,” she beseeched him in a small voice. “Must I tell it?”

If he was a nicer man, perhaps he would have relented.

But he had endured his own dose of humiliation when she had practically cut him in front of others following their introduction, and that had flayed him raw.

“Only if you want to be able to ask me other questions, both now and in the future,” he said casually, as if it made no difference to him what she decided to do.

She heaved a great sigh, her chin dropping.

“Fine.” Charity was silent for a long moment, thinking.

“Your mother was not the only one who ended up unhappy with her marriage. When I was—I do not know, ten years of age or so?—there were… several bad years where my father could barely speak a word to my mother. He drank a great deal, and only then would they talk. If one could call shouting speaking. In vino, veritas .”

Lost for the moment in her memories, she let her fingers twist in her skirts, headless of the wrinkles she might leave.

“He was… so angry with her because it was clear she would not be able to produce him any more children. There would be no heir. No son to carry on the title with his bloodline. There was only me and my younger sister. Useless girls .”

The bitterness in those words spoke of far more than a man shouting at his wife while drunk.

Peregrine would lay a wager that Charity had borne the brunt of Earl Cresswell’s anger directly, and suddenly he felt the urge to pay the man a call to have a few ungentlemanly words with him himself.

And perhaps to adjust the tightness of his cravat. “Charity?—”

“I am getting to the point,” she waved him off. “When he was at his utter worst, he told me he should have married your mother instead of mine, because then he would have ended up with you. The son he deserved to have.”

God. Well, now he did feel quite wretched about pressing her on the question. He disentangled her hands from her skirts again, letting them grip his fiercely instead.

“So… I knew your name long before I knew your face, Perry. Years before my debut. Both my mother and I knew you were the standard to which my father held me up against and found me lacking. My mother had warned me away from your family. We met on the balcony as strangers, and I liked you. But then… when I suddenly realised I was face to face with you , I—” Her voice broke.

“I nearly wept in front of everyone. It was the most mortifying moment of my life. As though I was a child all over again, being told I would never be enough.”

“Oh, Sparkles,” he said softly, pulling her into his lap to give her what little comfort he could.

Her chest hitched twice, and then she collapsed against him, burrowing her face in the crook of his neck.

Peregrine closed his eyes, nearly overcome by the smell of her beneath the fading florals of her perfume.

By the feel of her breath against his throat.

By the sense of how perfectly she fit against him, as if they were two broken parts that somehow fit together to make a whole.

He let his thumb graze possessively along the curve of her shoulder, tracing what he had no right to claim.

She was so fragile, made for finer things.

Deserving of a proper match to someone who would give her a family, standing, and security.

And no matter how many cautions he had been served, he could not seem to force himself to remember that he was the son of a monster.

He was tainted.

Opening his eyes with regret, he glanced outside the window and saw they were nearly back at Atholl House. Charity, feeling the change in tension in him, pulled back to her side of the bench, straightening her clothes.

“You are not going home yet, are you?” Her words were more of an accusation than a question. “What will you do now? Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Formulate some plan to get yourself back into the graces of Her Majesty. If you must throw me to the wolves to do so, I will trust your judgement. I am going to see if I can find Prinny at one of his usual haunts,” he told her, brushing a fallen lock of her hair behind her ear.

“Perhaps we can get him to reason with the Queen. At least long enough to be heard. If you plan to go back out tonight…”

Peregrine did not want to have to tell her about the contract. Not tonight. “Until things are sorted with my mother, it would help me to know you will not go out without your guards.”

Do not worry, Perry. I am not nearly done with you yet , his mother whispered into his thoughts.

Hodges brought the carriage to a halt in front of Atholl House, and Peregrine alighted to help her out, walking her to the front door.

“I will cancel my plans. It seems I feel a headache coming on,” she murmured with a slight quirk of her lip. But it faded as quickly as it showed, and she turned her head away as if embarrassed by her earlier confession. “Perry… keep yourself safe.”

With time to kill, Peregrine swapped his court wear for something more fashionably careless. A bottle green velvet coat and a jewelled pin in his cravat would put him in good company with the sotted nobles and gentry. And just after midnight, he set out on his hunt to find a regent.

Not that Prinny was difficult to locate.

One of the loose-lipped footmen at Carlton House gave Peregrine that information practically for free, though he tossed the man a guinea anyway.

It seemed that the Prince Regent still routinely favoured the den of iniquity known by the name of the Scarlet Jack. Despite its history.

The prince was apparently undeterred by the fact that he had been there the night last year that it had been set on fire by an arsonist and nearly burned to the ground. It had been rebuilt, newer and better, taking over the space beside it and bringing its reputation and clientele back to bare.

What was a heavy piece of irony about Prinny’s preference for it was that this particular establishment had been one of the more lucrative businesses Cameron had run for Marian Fitzroy.

And Peregrine wondered if the Regent had any idea that he had been feeding the Fitzroy coffers for years, drinking French liquor acquired by her smuggling operations, plowing her whores, and racking up small mountains of gambling debts at her card and dicing tables.