Page 94 of My Own True Duchess
She wrenched free and stalked across the office. “Your affidavits are useless, and you know it. You will never, ever close this place simply to spite me. I know you, Jonathan Tresham. The Coventry is your mistress. You will sell your soul before you give up on your precious hell.”
She withdrew a lady’s traveling bag from the bottom cabinet of the sideboard.
Packed and ready to go—of course. “I will warn the authorities in Paris of your impending arrival,” he said.
“Then I won’t go to Paris.”
“I have connections in every major European city, Moira. Your career as a cheat is over. Every night, somebody who cannot afford to play is throwing the dice, risking ruin out of a compulsion he or she is helpless to resist. I owe them an honest throw.”
She yanked a cloak from a peg near the door. “I cannot stand your righteous hypocrisy, Jonathan. You make up rules to comfort your conscience, but you’re every bit as much a cheat as I am. You ply the patrons with drink, knowing it makes them reckless, then—when you decide it’s time—you send them home in cabs you keep standing half the night from your own funds. Make up your mind whether you’re a gentleman or a rogue. I can tell you which one I prefer.”
She thrust a reticule into the traveling bag—a fat reticule no doubt also full of funds.
“The only part of your scheme I haven’t figured out, Moira, is why. Did you think we’d marry?”
The look she gave him was so nakedly despairing, Jonathan wished he’d not asked the question.
“Would it have been so bad, being married to me? I’m not hideous, and I understand you aren’t capable of loving a woman as she needs to be loved. But, no. Of course not. A future duke cannot ally himself openly with some lord’s cast-off plaything, no matter how much sense that would make. Pardon me for getting above myself again.”
“I am not a lordling, and I have never cast you off.”
She opened the desk drawer and withdrew a fistful of sovereigns. “Don’t try to stop me, Jonathan.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. The more you take with you, the farther you are likely to travel from me and this club. You haven’t told me what great wrong entitles you to act the woman scorned, Moira. You are not smitten with me. You are not worse off for having been in my employ.”
“Always in your employ, never your partner.”
Jonathan pushed the drawer closed before she could steal documents as well as coin. “You have won, Moira. The club’s reputation is now such that I cannot sell it for what it’s worth. My dukedom has been beggared by my uncle’s unwillingness to inflict progress on his tenants and retainers or go more deeply in debt. My marital prospects…”
That was the worst hurt, though Jonathan couldn’t lay Theo’s decision at Moira’s feet.
“Marry an heiress,” Moira retorted. “That’s what you lot do. Find a woman who can afford you and hand her a title to go with her stupidity. I wish you the joy of your union.”
“While you do what?”
She stuffed the money into her pockets. “You have this club, I have coin, but I was respectable once, Jonathan. I didn’t ruin myself. By an accident of birth that conferred both expectations and male gender on you, you will still be respectable when you’re sitting in Newgate awaiting trial, while I’ll be…”
She snatched a bonnet from the hook on the back of the door. “I would not have you now, Jonathan Tresham, if you begged me on bended knee.”
That was pride speaking, and Jonathan let her grand pronouncement go uncontested. Moira was battling the past, building a life around an old wound, holding all and sundry responsible for pain that should have been laid to rest long ago.
He knew that road. Knew the ditches and hedges, the muddy ruts… and now, when he desperately longed to turn about… Theo was gone, had probably sold the vases and baskets he’d sent her, just as she’d sold every reminder of her feckless spouse.
Dozens of pistols, Anselm had said, and even the man’s night clothes.
“This has to do with Lipscomb, doesn’t it?” Jonathan asked. “You went after him relentlessly and have succeeded in driving him off. What did he do to you?”
The fight went out of her as if she’d lost the largest pot of the evening. She sank into the chair behind the desk, running her finger over the crest embroidered on Jonathan’s handkerchief.
“Not him. His uncle. The previous viscount. The old hound wanted to play, then he pretended I’d encouraged him. Me, a decent girl who thought to be the helpmeet comforting him in his later years. The bastard.”
“So you set out to ruin his heir?” That made a kind of rough logic.
“I considered marrying Lipscomb, but he made it plain I wasn’t good enough for him. I’m not good enough for any of you.”
This discussion—this drama—should have given Jonathan hives, but finally getting some answers was too great a relief. Moira, however, needed a solution, else she’d turn up in two years like a bad penny, bringing rotten luck and threats of blackmail with her.
“Lord Davington is in Paris. You have the means to resolve his debts, you will be able to wrest a proposal from him. Find a quiet corner of the world where you can be happy and make the effort to fit in there with or without him. You can be patient and reasonable, or go on with your tantrum like a spoiled toddler.”
