Page 38 of Mercy Fletcher Meets Her Match
Well, he wouldn’t be calling again. He was a damned earl, and rather full of his own consequence despite the fact that it was well known he had quite a gambling problem and pockets to let because of it.
A recurring theme, he realized, as he perused the cards. Good God. He supposed Mr. Sumner—or else Mr. Fletcher himself—must have let the size of Mercy’s intended dowry be made public information. Every damned one of the men who had called upon her today was known to be somewhat less than financially stable. His stomach lurched with the advent of nausea as he realized he was going to have to tell her. To save her from unscrupulous gentlemen who didn’t give a fig about anything more than the funds with which she would come, did one of them condescend to take her to wife.
But as he lifted his eyes to hers, he saw the faint vexation lingering within her coffee-dark eyes and realized…she already knew. And yet it did not comfort him, that understanding—because she deservedto be wanted for herself.
She deserved to be wanted the wayhewanted her.
As he got round to passing out the mail at last, and he handed over to her yet another damned letter from C. Nightingale, he whispered,sotto voce, “Billiards?”
And there was the slightest flicker of relief in her dark eyes as she whispered the word back to him.
∞∞∞
Mercy strolled into the billiards room, dinner tray in hand, to find Thomas quite a bit more disheveled than usual, pouring himself a rather large glass of brandy.
“It’s not so bad as all that, is it?” she asked as she set the tray upon a corner of the billiard table. “Here. You should eat something.”
“Dinner,” he said, scrubbing his hand across his mouth as he came up from his drink. “Thank God; I’m half-starved. I thought it was not held over for me?”
“It wasn’t.” In fact, she’d had to send a footman out to find a tavern nearby with a good, hot meal available. “But you looked so devastated to learn it. I thought it was the least I could do.” And cook had managed to dress up the thick slice of steak and kidney pie and half a roast chicken with a slice of bread and a few wedges of cheese, along with a serving of the trifle that had been left over from dessert.
There was a conflict there upon his face, some manner of guilt lingering in the severe lines of it. Through the lenses of his spectacles, his dark eyes held traces of shame. And rather than reach for the tray, his hands flexed at his sides. “Mercy, I—”
“I’m not hurt,” she said, and it was mostly true. She’d been confused, yes, but not particularly wounded. “I didn’t imagine myself to be suddenly in demand, I promise you. I don’t know what happened, precisely, but I can hazard a guess. If it had been only one or two, perhaps it would have been different, but…onecan tell from seven unexpected callers, I think.”
But the confession had not relieved that queer expression upon his face. “I couldn’t decide which would have been better,” he said. “If you knew, or if you didn’t know. They’re both a tragedy in their own way. You should have callers who are genuine in their intentions. And I—I didn’t want to rip that away from you.”
“Truth suits me better,” she said. “I know well enough how the game is played in theTon. I simply choose not to play it myself.” With the tips of her fingers, she nudged the tray toward him. “I truly did not know that Lord Elkridge had come to call upon me,” she said as he took the hint and picked up his utensils at last. “I wouldn’t have accepted him if I had. He was dismissive and rather rude all around when your mother sought to introduce us some evenings ago. It’s the same with the rest of them,” she said lightly. “They’ve never so much as asked me to dance. What reason might they have had to call upon me, other than money?”
“Any number of reasons,” he said between harried bites, and she guessed that he trulywasnear to starving. “You’re pretty, and clever, and witty. You play billiards better than most men, and you’re a competent artist. You’re kind, even to people who have been less than kind to you in the past. You have so much more to recommend you than money.”
She shouldn’t have let the praise warm her as it had. But it did, nonetheless. “I’m pigheaded and stubborn,” she reminded him. “A menace.”
Halfway through the kidney pie, he laughed. “Yes,” he said. “You do menace me. I think you always will.” The tines of his fork came down, skewering the roast chicken upon his plate with a sort of violence she’d not thought him capable of. “I hate that those gentlemen—and I do use that term loosely—came calling for other reasons. I hate that you knew it already.”
“Would you have told me, if I had not?”
“Yes,” he said. “And I would have hated that, too. But you deserve better than to be used in that way. There are a good number of impoverished gentleman in London. I wouldn’t allow any of them to court my sisters. I won’t let them court you, either.”
A little shiver raced up Mercy’s spine at the assertion, which had sounded significantly less brotherly than she suspected he had intended. And she thought, perhaps it had not been so much the quality of the gentlemen who had presented themselves to her. Perhaps it had just been the fact that they had.
“I can only assume your father—or his solicitor—managed to drop a word in some choice ears regarding your dowry,” he said. And then, with a little shrug of his shoulders, he admitted, “I was meant to do it myself.”
“But you didn’t.” Somehow, it surprised her.
“I didn’t.” He shoved himself away from the billiard table and poured himself a fresh drink. “I didn’t,” he repeated, grimacing at the burn of the liquor down his throat. “Christ,” he said. “Do you remember some time ago, I offered you a deal? You wanted to know what I had been doing in Cheapside.”
It had been only a cheap ploy, really, to throw him off of his game as he had thrown her off of hers. “Yes,” she said.
“You refused it.”
“I still won’t tell you,” she said, with a lift of her chin.
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you anyway.” Down went the last of his liquor, and he set the glass back upon the table with a solidthunk. “I want—Ineed—you to know that I’m not one of them.”
“One of—of them?” A little laugh trickled up from her throat. “You’re not impoverished. And you’re not courting me, besides.”
“Iamimpoverished. Temporarily. I hope.” He yanked at his cravat as if it had begun to strangle him, and it came free slowly, in a long pull of snowy fabric. “My solicitor embezzled from me.Everything, near as I can tell. Near as anyone can tell, presently.”
