Page 5 of To Tempt a Troubled Earl
Inglis and the second footman were already yanking open the door as Lando shoved the man through it. It had taken every ounce of Lando’s breeding not to send him on his way with a smashed jaw. Slamming the door shut behind him, he staggered back into the chaise’s rich upholstery, Angel’s words pounding in his ears.Love. Charles’s precious love and Lando’s most carefully guarded secret had been turned into a weapon against him.
Enveloped by a sudden and dreadful bone-crushing weariness, he dragged in a breath. Lando’s staff knew his inclinations, of course, how could they not? But now this hot-headed young man did too. He had been there at the end, at Charles’s bedside, where Lando should have been. And instead of kindness, he was twisting his knowledge to… Lando was unsure, but doubtless, it would involve money. All that romantic flummery was nothing but a thinly veiled prelude to extortion. Angel was on the cusp of exposing his and Charles’s love to the world if Lando didn’t cooperate; he didn’t care for his uncle’s deep affection for his sister or for Lando; Angel cared for money.
Lando could pay the fellow off, he supposed, with enough blunt to set him and his sister up so he never bothered the earl again. Or, less charitably, he could fight fire with fire, threaten Angel with something untoward, make a subtle suggestion to a friendly magistrate. An earl’s word against unknown Mr Angel’s. How could Angel retaliate? The chap didn’t have any proof. He and Charles had always been too careful. There were no trinkets, no treasured locks of hair curled behind dull cameo brooches, no damned sonnets secreted between the pages of a dusty, earnest book. All that remained of his short years with Charles were mountains of happy memories now increasingly tarnished by this damned avengingAngelwith every passing moment. It was as if he was ripping love letters from the earl’s heart and reading them out loud, one by one.
Nobody had so much as whispered the name Charles Prosser between the walls of Rossingley these last three years. Lando had grieved silently and alone. His every word, every gesture, and every social invitation turned down had been nothing but another frosty layer concealing the cold white stone buried deep in his chest.
And now, this handsome young man with his gold earring, his brash fury, and his impudence scattered those layers like rose petals, dancing through Lando’s armour like it wasn’t even there.
Chapter Four
TO BE THROWNout of an earl’s house once was careless. Twice, and a pattern was developing that Kit’s sore knees would rather didn’t persist. At least this time, it was in broad daylight, though the one-eyed footman was even uglier in the afternoon sunshine. Wisely, Kit refrained from telling him so.
After attending to his horse, Kit returned to his cell at the inn, where he nursed his knees and his grievances with a bottle of gin and concentrated his efforts on devising a plan to bring down Sir Ambrose Gartside without the aid of the Earl of Rossingley. Needless to say, with very little money, no status, and no family or friends in possession of either, Kit’s options were few.
He could kill him and be done with it, as simple as that. But Kit was no murderer, and as Rossingley had so plainly pointed out, murder came with its own set of unique risks. And how could Kit’s own death ever advantage his sister?
For the same pragmatic reasons, he crossed duelling off his list. Like all these feckless gentlemen of thetonwith too much time on their hands, Gartside was no doubt a decent shot and an adequate swordsman. Kit was neither.
Reporting the crime to a magistrate? That was out of the question too. Not only was it Anne’s humble words against a baronet, but a well-connected one such as Gartside could extricate himself from the criminal justice system as swiftly as a snake through grass.
Which left…trickery. Trickery on a grand scale. Set a thief to catch a thief. Set a lord to catch a baronet. A lord with a grievance himself, a lord of high moral standing, wealth, and time. A lord with a secret he would prefer remained concealed. Kit had tried softly-softly, appealing to the earl’s better nature, and it had been an unmitigated disaster. It had left him with no choice but to increase the pressure and make bolder insinuations, no matter how much threatening to expose Uncle Charles’s deviancy pained him. The earl never needed to know Kit wouldn’t go through with it. Kit didn’t want money from Rossingley, simply his cooperation, his sharp mind, and the doors his involvement would open so that Kit could crush Gartside once and forever.
Chapter Five
WILLIAM BLANDFORD, THEearl’s longstanding man of business, accompanied Lando on his daily ride across the estate. On this cool crisp morn, Blandford was unusually quiet. Perhaps he recognised his employer’s reflective mood and adjusted his own accordingly. Prepared for a lengthy hack, he expressed mild surprise when Lando drew Twilight to a standstill at the eastern boundary separating his well-maintained properties and land from his scruffy Gartside neighbour.
“I need the scuttlebutt, Will. Speak freely.” With a critical eye, Lando surveyed the overgrown fields and the ruins of a roofless cottage in the distance. “How fare Gartside’s tenants these days?”
Gentlemen of the earl’s class were sniffy about tittle-tattle, claiming to be above it while fearful of being the subject. Lando, however, was quite partial; that gossip was a double-edged pastime bothered him not. On the contrary, knowing his retreat from society was a topic of clueless, sweet speculation around thetonwas one of life’s few pleasures. In his absence, stories of his eccentricity had run riot.
The question, therefore, did not seem to perturb Will. “Badly, my lord. And much worse since his lordship’s father passed and Sir Ambrose took his place. Corn and barley yields have been down these past two years on account of the late rains, yet rents have gone up. I’ll wager at least one tenant farmer will be in the workhouse by Christmas. My wife’s cousins, prudent folk, tell us they fear for the winter too.”
Lando cursed. Gartside had the emotional integrity of an automaton. “I see,” he said, then pointed with his slender riding crop. “That tumbledown cottage yonder. Are there others like it?”
The Rossingley estate boasted 60,000 rich and profitable acres. With a more modest 35,000, Gartside was still home to an entire village, made up of a chapel, an inn, farmland, and umpteen tied cottages.
“I believe there are, my lord. Inglis’s brother has suffered terribly with his chest these past two winters and blames it squarely on damp and dry rot. His father succumbed from the same two months ago. The doctor is in firm agreement and has raised the matter with Sir Ambrose on several occasions, to no avail.”
“Is that so.” Lando grimaced.
“My wife’s cousin says the baronet doesn’t know the first thing about managing farmland. At their family seat on the Scottish borders, his sister’s husband does all the work and with great success, by all accounts.”
“Such a shame Gartside prefers this one,” Lando commented.
“Indeed, my lord. The proximity to London society may have something to do with it.” Blandford cleared his throat. “I hear Sir Ambrose finds the Scottish borders quite dull. And cold.”
“Succeeding in such a harsh environment requires perseverance and intelligence. Ambrose Gartside, I fear, is distinctly lacking in both.”
With a click of his heels, Lando turned from the boundary and back towards his own lush, rolling pastures. Not immune to poor weather, Rossingley crop yields were down, too, the difference being his tenant farmers’ rents had fallen along with it. Lando had made up the shortfall with a wise investment in a Manchester cotton mill. Like his father before him, he had never shied away from plunging forward with new ventures. Not of the moneymaking sort anyhow. Moving on from his grief was another matter entirely. At moments such as this, he yearned for Charles’s sensible advice to guide him.
“I’ll ride alone from here, Blandford.” Lando’s man of business’s broad posterior was much happier behind his walnut desk than precariously balanced on a coarse leather saddle. “But I would be obliged if you could make some enquiries of your wife’s cousins. And Inglis’s brother. Hearsay is all well and good, but I’d like some proof and figures to go along with it. And ensure they are remunerated for their efforts along with anyone else who cares to assist. But not so handsomely questions are asked, you understand.”
“That I do, my lord.”
Dismissing him with a nod, Lando cantered away. Astride Twilight and eating up the hard ground, he filled his lungs with pure Rossingley air. His favourite stallion was hungry to run, and cantering cured most evils, Lando found.
However, no matter how fast he urged the beast onwards now, he couldn’t outride his hammering thoughts. On reaching stonier ground around the lake, Lando slowed to a trot and let them wash over him instead, pondering the conundrums of Mr Angel, his poor sister, and his dastardly neighbour.
