Page 44 of Fortune Favors the Viscount
“Very good.” Nick flipped him a shilling and the boy grinned before slipping back out the door.
He leaned back in his chair and scrubbed both hands over his face. Members were quitting his club because they didn’t want to speak to him in Parliament or let him court their daughters. If only Miss Greene could hear that, after she had held those very things out as temptation.
Miss Greene.
He inhaled deeply, then let it out. No matter how he tried to avoid her—even the thought of her—she was everywhere. He’d spent less and less time at home to avoid meeting her, and still he could smell her scent in the air and hear the murmur of her voice even from two floors and several closed doors away. At least, he imagined he could, lying exhausted but awake in his bed, picturing her leaning over Lucinda’s stitching, that lone curl brushing her bare neck, or teaching Charlotte how to sweep a grand curtsy, her bosom swelling over the neckline of her gown.
Being at the club was scant reprieve, though. Not only were members leaving, word had spread through Vega’s, and he’d had to address the full staff to repeat the assurances he’d already given Forbes that the Sydenham title would change nothing about the club. Guillaume, still smarting from the dressing-down over Clara, had remarked rather snidely that a lord ought to pay lordly wages. Forbes, still smarting from having to quell the battle royale, had retorted that, in his experience, lords paid lower wages and often not even those, and then Nick had had to promise that no one would be sacked or have their wages cut.
As if all that weren’t enough indignity, Grantham arrived the next morning with more.
“This was at my offices this morning.” The solicitor handed him a letter.
Nick set down his billiard cue and read it. It took him a moment to decipher the meaning, couched as it was in vague and flowery words. He glanced at Grantham. “Someone wants me to sell this club?”
“For your own good,” he replied dryly.
Nick handed back the letter and took up his cue again to conceal his fury. Between the lines of that letter was a threat: Nick knew too much about too many people. His pursuit of the Sydenham title would be complicated—even outright opposed—if he maintained control of the Vega Club. The letter writer, who hadn’t deigned to sign his own name, had suggested Nick either relinquish his claim, or unburden himself of the club, and proposed an insultingly low sum.
Nick was coming to agree with Forbes about aristocratic gentlemen: arrogant, ignorant, and useless. A plague on all of them.
“Twice someone’s come ‘round to query my clerks,” Grantham went on. “Sniffing for any fault in the petition. They claimed to be from the Committee for Privileges, but they weren’t.”
“I presume they found no faults.” Nick lined up his shot. Billiards helped him keep his temper under control, and soothed his mind after a difficult night. He was playing a lot recently.
“Of course not.” His solicitor was affronted. “Nor will they. Miss Greene did the work of five investigators.”
Nick’s shot veered wide of its target, and he swore in frustration. “Never underestimate a woman on a mission.” He moved around the table and sighted another shot along his cue. “Although I still fully expect someone to emerge from the wilds of Dorset, a distant eccentric cousin who lives in an isolated cottage on a moor and takes no newspapers or letters, to lodge a competing petition.”
Grantham waved it away. “They’d better come bearing proof of an unknown marriage to some hapless Sidney never known to anyone else. Miss Greene searched diligently.”
Nick missed his shot again and rose to glare at his solicitor in irritation for saying her name over and over. “It sounds as though I ought to be paying Miss Greene rather than you. Apparently she put in all the effort.”
Grantham laughed. He’d drawn up the agreements the governess had demanded for her salary and Lucinda’s trust. “Youarepaying her. Very handsomely.”
Nick gave up. He stowed his cue in the cabinet. Billiards weren’t helping.
“The newspapers have got hold of it, too,” Grantham went on. “I did my best to quell the worst rumors, but some things are irresistible to gossipmongers. You ought to put your servants on guard not to speak to anyone about you.”
Nick shrugged. He’d been in the scandal pages for years, and only expected it to get worse. But he’d also never been one to sit back and take abuse. He’d recently invested in a newspaper, and the grateful owner had been eager to offer advice about how best to preserve one’s reputation among the fourth estate. “My people are tight-lipped, and have been for years. As for the newspapers, I’ve made plans.”
“Oh? Anything I should know about?”
“Not really,” murmured Nick, spinning a billiard ball across the felt. “If that’s all, I’m going home.”
Grantham bowed his head. “Certainly. Until next week.”
The solicitor left and Nick stood motionless for a moment. Why weren’t billiards helping? They required concentration, calculation, a perfect stillness in body and mind before a decisive strike. He played them to clear his mind and forget other cares. Normally a few games left him calm and quieted, but today he had been playing for over an hour and still felt restless and unsettled.
It must be exhaustion. He hadn’t slept more than five hours a day in weeks—not since Emilia Greene took up residence in his house. It was almost ten o’clock in the morning; perhaps the gods would smile on him, and she would be out walking through all the parks in London when he returned home, and he could collapse into oblivion without seeing her and being shocked alive all over again.
He inhaled deeply. Notalive. He was perfectly, normally alive already. The crackle of lightning that seemed to course through him every time he caught her looking at him or overheard her laugh... that was probably illness, he told himself. He was neglecting his health. A good day’s sleep, and he would be his usual self.
He put on his coat and headed for home.
CHAPTERSIXTEEN
Pearce swept open the door as he strode up the front steps. “Good morning, sir. Mr. Forbes has sent over the receipts, and they are in your study.”
