Page 29 of When the Marquess Needed Me (The Rake Chronicles #4)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

B eatrice could not quell her anxiety.

And the carriage appeared to be moving in a deucedly slow fashion.

There was no way, she wagered, that the carriage to London had moved as slowly as this one was moving out of it.

“Do you think we might quicken our pace?” she asked—she was aware—not for the first time.

“Once we clear London, Preston will give the horses their head. He is an excellent coachman. He knows what he is doing,” Leith said.

She watched his hand flex on his knee. For a moment, she had the feeling that he wanted to reach across the seat and take her hand. But that must be a hallucination, she thought, because if he wanted to, he would.

Only Sally sat with them in the coach, with Charles and Preston riding outside. Surely, he would take her hand in front of Sally, if he really desired it.

No, she must only be thinking of such things because of how much she desired his touch. He had been so comforting when she had received that alarming missive from her mother, which had plunged her into such a state of worry and trepidation.

But this morning he had been all formality.

“Do not overset yourself, Beatrice,” Sally said, quietly, from next to her on the squabs. “Mrs. Salisbury will not be in immediate danger with Mr. Gordstone.”

“We cannot know that,” Beatrice retorted, trying to keep any acid from her voice. “Perhaps you did not catch how he eyed my mother when he visited us last. She even admitted that the man has always had unscrupulous intentions towards her. Even when our father was alive.”

“How did you come to know Mr. Gordstone?” Leith asked.

“He is an old friend of my father’s,” Beatrice explained, “but it has been a long while since anyone in our family has regarded him in such an amiable light. My father quarreled with him before his death, apparently over his inability to pay this debt.”

“Why was your father in debt to him? Was he a gamester? A spendthrift?”

Beatrice shook her head. She did not know how to explain her father to Leith. “He was not usually irresponsible in money matters. If anything, he was the opposite. He was a cold man—grim and stingy. Nevertheless, he did not run Parkhorne well. He was too parsimonious, too small-minded. Unwilling to wager anything for a potential reward. The estate was struggling when he died. He must have turned to Mr. Gordstone in desperation.”

“How much is the debt for?”

Could Beatrice really tell him such information? It felt, somehow, unspeakably personal.

Although, she supposed, she had been more intimate with him than anyone else…certainly any man. Surely, exposing the debt accrued by another, even if he was her father, was a small thing in comparison to what they had already shared.

Still, when she spoke, she whispered. “Ten thousand pounds.”

Leith did not curse or exclaim. He merely met her eye and nodded. “I presume he is threatening to take Parkhorne as payment.”

“Yes,” she said. “We were only able to stave him off initially because we gave him five hundred pounds. Which was all the ready coin I had at the time. He was supposed to stay away for a year. But it seems he has come back early.”

“Your mother will feel she cannot send him away when he holds the debt.”

“Exactly. He could call in the bailiffs at any time, if he so wished. My mother could not withstand debtor’s prison, I assure you.”

Leith’s expression went stony. “No one is going to prison.”

He said the words with such an air of authoritative dismissal that it irked her. He , of course, couldn’t be put in debtor’s prison, not as a peer. But she and her family very well could. She pursed her lips to keep herself from giving him the tongue-lashing she wanted to. He was, she told herself, only trying to help.

“I do wonder why he has come back. This Mr. Gordstone. If you agreed to have him stay away for a year.”

“That is what worries me,” Beatrice said. “I think, of course, that he wants back the money he lent my father. But I think, more than that, he wants my mother as payment.”

“Has he proposed marriage?”

Beatrice shook her head. “He knows she would refuse. Or, at least, she will as long as she thinks I am in London raising the money to pay him. She would do anything for us—even marry Mr. Gordstone—if she thought it would free us from this debt. That I cannot have.”

Beatrice imagined seeing her gentle, sweet mother married to Mr. Gordstone and her stomach turned. She would rather marry the man herself, if it came to it, than see her mother, who had already suffered so much at her father’s hands, his unwilling bride.

She watched Leith’s eyebrow quirk up.

“What did you tell your family you were doing in London?”

Beatrice looked over at Sally, who gave her an ironic little smile. Explain this one , she seemed to say. Beatrice scowled at her sister.

“Well,” Beatrice said, delicately, “I was not exactly truthful.”

“What she means,” Sally added, “is that she was not truthful at all. Well, except for in my case.”

“Given that you insisted on coming with me to London, I had little choice.”

“I couldn’t let you go alone, Bea. Not everything can be on your shoulders only.”

Beatrice stole a glance at Leith. He looked positively alarmed.

“Where does your mother think you have been?”

She bit her lip. She never thought that Leith and her mother would meet. She never thought she would have to explain this little subterfuge on her part.

But, she supposed, she had to let him in on this little secret now. She certainly couldn’t have him telling her mother the truth.

“She thinks I have been in London raising funds to pay my father’s debts. I told her that, among my father’s papers, I found records of loans that he had given out to high-ranking friends from his Cambridge days.”

“How did you plan on explaining your extended absence? Or when they saw your name next to mine in the scandal sheets?”

“Eventually I planned to tell them that I had found a position. As a companion to a wealthy widow. Or some such. And my mother and my brothers do not read the scandal sheets, so they would never be the wiser.”

“ Everyone reads the scandal sheets.”

Beatrice shook her head. “I assure you that they don’t. My mother only reads The Lady’s Magazine . And they do not have social pages.”

“Yes,” Leith bit off. “One of the few areas I can agree with Henrietta’s conduct. So your family, they are completely ignorant of your true activity in London?”

Beatrice shifted. It did not please her to lie to her family, but she had seen no other option.

“Yes.”

“Do you not think they might have liked to have a say in such a sacrifice on your part?”

“It was not a sacrifice,” she said, loathing the air of judgment in his tone. “Or, at least, not one that I wasn’t very happy to make for their sakes.”

“They would have never allowed her to go, if they knew the truth,” Sally added.

“Sally!” Beatrice chided.

“You know it is true, Bea. Certainly not your mother or Malcolm.”

“Malcom?” Leith asked, his expression bewildered. “I thought your brother’s name was George?”

Beatrice sighed. She hadn’t revealed this aspect of her life to Leith either.

“I was not my father’s only by-blow,” Sally said, her tone an uncanny echo of her own jaded delivery.

“We have four brothers,” Beatrice informed him. “George, of course. But then there are three others—Philip, Severn, and Malcolm—who are…not my mother’s.”

“And they live with you? At Parkhorne?”

“Yes,” Beatrice said, adjusting her skirts.

Leith opened his mouth and then closed it again. He appeared to be at a bit of a loss for words.

“Ages?” he proffered finally.

“I’m the second oldest of the bastards,” Sally volunteered. “Only Malcolm is older than me.”

“He is twenty-two,” Beatrice said. “Severn is the same age as George. Fifteen.”

“And Philip is the youngest,” Sally said. “He is twelve.”

“I see,” Leith said, rubbing his fingers along his eyebrow, a muscle in his jaw flexing. “And none know your true activities in London.”

“No,” Beatrice snapped. “And you will not tell them.”

“How will you explain my presence by your side when we arrive at your home?”

She had not considered this problem until this moment, as she had been so lost to worry.

“I will tell them a version of the truth,” she mused aloud. “That you are a friend of Lord Montaigne’s. I told them, you see, that Lord Montaigne’s father was one of the men to whom our father had lent money. All those years ago. I will say that you and Lord Montaigne wanted to help with my predicament.”

Leith gave her a dubious look.

She shook her head. “My mother is not the suspicious sort. She will not be the problem.”

“Even the most unsuspicious mother might wonder at the man traveling at her daughter’s side.”

“Bea is right—Mrs. Salisbury is not… She has a gentle nature,” Sally said.

“It’s not my mother who worries me. Or the younger boys. It is Malcolm.”

“Your oldest brother?” Leith said, with the air of a man who had just been introduced to a complex branch of knowledge.

“Yes. He was not so easily convinced about the nature of my activities in London.”

Sally snorted. “He didn’t believe her. At all. He knew our father too well to countenance that he had lent money to anyone.”

“And he is protective. Which is absurd. As I am his elder.”

Leith tilted his head inscrutably.

“Should I expect to be called out?”

“He is not that foolish,” Beatrice said. “But you can expect to be questioned.”

“I doubt he will believe my story of Christian charity.”

“No,” Beatrice said, knowing he was right. “He won’t. So you must make it seem as though you have honorable intentions. That you are a man in love. I know it will be a difficult bit of acting, but it is the only way forward that I see.”

She could not look at him as she said the words in love . She did not want to suggest that he actually felt such strong feelings for her, when she knew that, while undoubtedly fond of her, he was not the type of man to fall in love.

“Very well,” Leith said, his tone light, for which she was grateful. “And I can be a help with Mr. Gordstone, thank the Lord.”

Beatrice froze at the icy confidence in his last statement. “What do you mean?”

Leith scoffed. “Not for nothing am I a marquess. He will not be intimidating or terrorizing anyone at Parkhorne Hall whilst I am in residence. And once we arrive, I will be sending a few letters back to London to inquire into his affairs.”

“No,” Beatrice said, frustration spiraling through her. “That will not be necessary. I can handle Mr. Gordstone.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Beatrice. It is useless to quarrel with me about the subject. I am not going to let a household of women and boys be terrorized in such a fashion. And certainly not the woman that I—” he broke off, with a strange turn to his countenance “—who is my mistress. With men of this nature, they only listen to one thing.”

Irritation continued to flare within her. She had not foreseen such a complication when she had accepted his help returning to Somerset. He was suggesting that his masculinity, his power, was the only thing that could combat Gordstone.

“I would prefer that you not intervene.”

He scoffed. “But I already have. You are here in my carriage, are you not?”

“I never asked for your help.”

“You have not asked for my help, but you have received it nonetheless.”

She gritted her teeth. He did not understand. Parkhorne was hers . She did not need him meddling in her affairs there. She could handle Mr. Gordstone.

“Perhaps Lord Leith is correct,” Sally said, tentatively. “Mr. Gordstone will doubtlessly be intimidated by his rank.”

“No,” she said, letting more acid into her tone than she liked, but unable to bear the idea of being a helpless female beside Lord Leith the commanding peer. “I will deal with the man. If he does not respect me, he will never leave us alone.”

“Men of this nature, Beatrice, they only—”

“Yes, they only listen to other gentlemen. I am aware of your views.”

“That is not what I was going to say. I was going to say that they only listen to power. If I am right about him, he will only be checked by a man who has more influence and wealth than him.”

“I am more powerful than him,” she ground out, not at all certain what she meant. Gordstone was not particularly wealthy, but he was no doubt wealthier than her family at present. “Do not interfere.”

She met his eye. It was important to her that he understood. That he agreed.

“Please.”

He looked irritated. Annoyed. She anticipated the protest to come.

Instead, he took a breath and exhaled.

“I will let you lead. But if I detect any danger to you—or the others—I will not hold myself in check. Do not ask it of me.”

That, she supposed, was as much independence as the man was going to give her.

And she loathed the small part of herself that was relieved at his words. That took solace in his presence. That Gordstone would not be able to completely bully her family as long as he was at the hall.

“I, for one, am glad that you are with us, Lord Leith,” Sally said. “Gordstone is loathsome. And we need all the help we can get.”

Beatrice suppressed a childish impulse to give her sister a pinch. It seemed to her, even though she knew Sally did not mean it, supremely ungrateful of her to welcome aid from Lord Leith, when it was Beatrice who had taken care of everyone since her father’s death.

“I am glad you two agree,” she said instead, turning away from them and looking out the window. “Now, if you don’t mind, I am going to try and sleep.”

Blessedly, neither of them said another word.

At least she would be able to nurse her wounded pride in peace.