Page 72 of The Ladies Least Likely

The matron’s smile held boundless compassion, humor, wisdom, and a steel backbone beneath it all. “If a donation comes our way that supports the work of the Hospital, we would of course be grateful, Miss Illingworth,” she said. “Each according to his need, and each according to his means.”

Amaranthe nodded. She didn’t know how they were to negotiate wages for the new staff, but Grey had promised to work that out in his visit to the solicitor.

Hopefully he would meet her with good news, and they could spend the day preparing Hunsdon House, and the children, to welcome their new servants.

That left her one more day to finish her quest through the ducal library.

She hoped Joseph, who was due to present himself that morning to tutor the duke and his brother, would prove of use in this.

And that the watchful and, she feared, all too intelligent Malden Grey would not guess how she had set out to deceive him.

Mal had a frustrating morning. He had hoped setting Hunsdon House in order was a task he could make short work of.

But Mr. Coutts, the banker, proved less than illuminating on the subject of returning to financial solvency.

With the income from the second quarter having evaporated, the only means of finding funds was sale of property, which Grey did not have the authority to do.

With an apologetic cough, Mr. Coutts suggested the possibility of a small, discreet loan, but that line of inquiry ended with the subject of collateral.

Mal had nothing of his own to forfeit. He let his rooms, lived as modestly as he could in order to invest in his appearance as a gentleman, and had no savings.

He had spent everything in preparing for the bar, and with his father the old duke dead, there was no one left to pull the strings of preferment on Mal’s behalf.

He could languish for years in the Middle Temple before the Benchers called him.

“Are there other professions you might consider?” Mr. Coutts inquired.

“The Household Cavalry,” Mal said gloomily, getting to his feet. “The Grenadier Guards. The King at least pays a decent salary.”

“You would cut a fine figure in the uniform,” Mr. Coutts agreed.

Mal jammed his hat on his head as he strode into the street, looking for the curricle.

It had seemed wise to take the lighter, two-wheeled carriage for his errands with Miss Illingworth that day.

But the lack of space obliged Miss Illingworth to sit quite close to him, her silk skirts spilling over his leg, his elbow occasionally brushing hers when he pulled back on the reins, and that had proved a very distracting prospect.

A trio of women emerged from a shop across the street, pausing to watch as Mal leapt into his vehicle, and they giggled when he glanced their way.

He tipped his hat out of habit, but today the female attention annoyed him.

All anyone seemed to think he was good for was lounging about well-dressed and occasionally saying something droll.

He was stuck without hope of professional advancement.

He was such a terrible half-brother that his siblings had been abandoned in their own home and he hadn’t known it.

And now he didn’t have the first clue how to resolve the situation Sybil had left them in.

Were he anything more than a bastard—if he had a title to throw around, itself collateral for any loan; if he had property, savings, anything of his own—they wouldn’t be in this quandary. He’d never felt so useless in his life.

He wondered if Miss Illingworth was one of those women who went soft-headed over a man in uniform, but that line of thought was unproductive, and he pushed it aside. He would rather be appreciated for his intellect and his accomplishments, rather than his looks.

And while he’d glimpsed a glimmer of appreciation in her eyes when they met in the parlor at Hunsdon House that morning, Miss Illingworth didn’t seem the type to be impressed by appearances. She had far too exacting a mind.

Mal fell into a brown study as the carriage bumped along the crowded, noisy Strand back to Middle Temple, where he entered the Hall to find the barrister and friend who had taken on his guardianship case.

Rosenfeld was engaged with other pleaders and students in a lively debate taking place over several pints of ale, but he allowed Mal to draw him off for a stroll through the gardens and a consultation.

Discussion of his court case made no improvement in his mood.

Rosenfeld agreed that Sybil’s absconding to the Continent with the duke’s steward, income, and several household items should have the effect of dismissing her case obstructing his efforts to gain guardianship.

But he didn’t have to remind Mal that the Courts of Chancery moved at a pace best called glacial.

Rosenfeld could enter a bill for a provisional appointment of Mal as the children’s guardian, but the Lord Chancellor was likely to impose restrictions on Mal’s access to the estate’s income and other assets, given the estate in question belonged to a duke.

“Rosenfeld,” Mal said as they strolled out of the lush, tranquil gardens, a haven of peace inside busy London, and came to the broad square before the Hall. “That’s a Jewish name, isn’t it?”

His friend’s face assumed a bland expression. “I suppose it is, in some families,” he said, his tone neutral. “But, of course, to graduate Oxford with my civil law degree, I took the Oath of Communion as a member of the Anglican Church.”

“Yes, naturally,” Mal murmured. He’d taken the same oath, though he couldn’t say he was a church member in good standing. Such a thing would require church attendance, possibly tithes, and most certainly a subscription to the doctrines and dogma of belief. Mal had his doubts.

But all students of England’s greatest colleges were required to be Church of England. No Dissenters, Protestants, Quakers, Methodists, or Jews.

“It’s recently occurred to me,” Mal remarked, “how long, and how often, Jews have had to hide their culture and their religion to survive.” He supposed many, like Amaranthe’s mother’s family, had chosen to conform as a means of survival when to cling to their faith would mean penury, exile, or death at the stake.

“Prickly history, that,” Rosenfeld said dryly, and there the matter rested.

Mal wondered about Rosenfeld’s private beliefs, but a man ought to have some things he could keep to himself.

For his own part, Mal didn’t advertise that he was a bastard any more than he needed to.

He liked the way he was treated when he was accepted as just another young man about town, erstwhile gentleman, aspiring barrister.

He could usually tell when his parentage had reached a new acquaintance’s ears.

Invitations from their mothers and requests to escort their sisters stopped, but he was invited just as often, if not more frequently, to less savory entertainments like gambling clubs, cock fights, and drunken rambles.

Mal’s mood turned decidedly glum as he fought his way down the narrow, twisting lanes of the City to the office of his solicitor and the estate’s man of business.

It seemed his traditional bad luck was holding true.

He wondered if Miss Illingworth were having better luck than he with her errands of the morning.

With that serene face and that clever, wry twist of her lips, she could wring anything from anyone, he had no doubt.

When she drifted into the parlor in a cloud of indigo silk, he’d been struck dumb.

He had expected to find his fancies of the evening before and the strange, erotic dreams that had followed him into sleep would be banished in the morning, and in the light of day he would find her again prim and plain, a steely-eyed spinster bluestocking.

Instead he found a ravishing beauty. Against a backdrop of expensive silk, the severe lines of her face looked elegant, her coloring became vivid and arresting, and that all-too-expressive mouth looked decidedly alluring.

Wondering about the shape of her beneath the stylish gown fired his blood in the light of day every bit as much as it had in the candlelit shadows of his father’s study the night before.

But her transformation posed a sobering reminder that in the world of the haut ton, it was easy to confuse worth with how much money someone possessed.

The right trimmings could make any woman appealing, elegant, well-bred.

He had to teach Hugh how to discern a woman’s character beneath the plumage.

Amaranthe Illingworth had character in spades.

It was written in the high curve of her cheek, the way her mouth pinched when she was angry, the brows that rose up and down with curiosity, and the eyes that gleamed with intelligence.

In the violet glow that stunned him when he got close enough to look.

Mal shook his head to clear it of fanciful images.

Money. The subject at hand was money. Where was he to get it?

He couldn’t ask Viktor for a loan. Like most of their friends, Viktor spent coin as freely as it came to him, not letting a guinea grow warm in his pocket before it was gone in the pursuit of some pleasure.

Neither could he write home and ask Aunt Beatrice for money.

She and Littlejohn were getting on in life and needed every penny of their tiny, well-earned savings to serve as a pension for when they were too old to finally work.

It had always been vaguely in Mal’s mind that, when he became a sergeant at law, he would be able to send money home, not ask for it.