Page 93 of Avenging the Earl's Lady
Chapter 23
“Ruined?”
Her vision clouded and she gripped the table edge, leaning in, struggling for a breath.“You’re leaving England?You’re ruined?”The damned fool.“As if you have any idea what it is to be ruined.”She unclenched her hands, straightened, and jabbed a finger at him.“You will carry that chair over.You will sit down and join us.Lord Shaldon has things he must tell us about today.”
His brows pinched together and his mouth firmed into a hard line.
“Quentin, there are things you and Imusthear.”
He bit down on his lip, but fetched the chair.
What kind of mother might she have been to a strong-willed boy?Regret poked at her, and she pushed it aside.She must help her pigheaded son find the good sense that should be his legacy from her.
Shewassensible, mostly.
Shaldon seated her and then himself, and only then would Quentin sit.The Earl’s face was a cypher, but Quentin’s demeanor screamed obstinance.
Blasted men.She looked hard at Shaldon, nodded her head toward her son, and cleared her throat.“My lord?”
“Charles will go with you to White’s tomorrow, Penderbrook,” he said, “where you will learn that other members of the club succumbed to a severe dyspepsia.”
Quentin’s shoulders lifted.
Jane handed Shaldon his tea.“You sir, are a devious one.”She poured another cup and heaped in sugar.“Drink this,” she said, handing the cup to Quentin, “it will help settle your stomach and get your strength back.”
He grimaced and took a sip.“Nevertheless, I’m doomed when the Major comes into White’s.”
“He won’t return to White’s,” Shaldon said.
His head came up from the cup.“He’ll be expelled?”
“What he did was not the act of an honorable man, not even if he’d been completely befuddled with drink.But he won’t return to White’s because he won’t return to England.”
“His past has caught up with him,” Jane said.
As hers had caught up with her.She hadn’t chased after the past, the way Shaldon had.She’d simply deferred her day of reckoning.
Perhaps Shaldon’s way was better.He didn’t hide from trouble.He addressed it head on.
She blinked and reached for a biscuit, nibbling without tasting, needing to keep her hands busy, as Shaldon recounted the Major’s fate.
Quentin listened until the end and frowned.“The fellows will puzzle out that it was a fraud.I’m a fraud.They will laugh when they learn that my mother appeared and—”
“Damn the fellows,” she cried, rising, and quickly seating herself again as he shot to his feet.“Sit down, Quentin.”
“Mother, the Major can’t just sail off for some rough Spanish justice.He attacked a lady.He cut you.”
Quentin knew of her wound but hadn’t been told who inflicted it.She glanced at Shaldon and he lifted an eyebrow.
“The Major had been poisoned as well,” she said.“He didn’t duel today.”
“But Shaw was as ill as I.Too ill to—”
“Shaw didn’t fight, either,” she said.“It was the Duque who stepped in for the Major.”
Shaldon rubbed his injured shoulder.“And got the better of me, I’m embarrassed to say.Your mother avenged me by shooting him.”
Quentin turned wide eyes on her, as if he were really seeing her for the first time, a woman capable of shooting a Spanish nobleman.Perhaps from time to time effective mothering required such decisive violence.
