Page 20 of Unmasked by the Marquess
He was a blasted idiot.
“Oh, you poor dear,” Mrs. Allenby said from the door. “Gilbert said he thought you were coming down with some sort of spring ague and I dare say he had the right of it. You don’t look at all the thing.”
Spring ague? He had never heard of such a malady, let alone contracted it. If he looked out of sorts, it was because he missed Robin. What was Gilbert thinking, telling tales about his health, and since when did bloody Mrs. Allenby have the right to fuss over him? She didn’t—heaven forfend—think that as his father’s mistress she had standing as some sort of mother figure, did she? She was only a few years older than he was, for God’s sake.
Yet here she was, looking at him as if he were a child with a troubling rash. He folded his arms and glared down at her.
“I’m perfectly well,LordGilbert is an interfering busybody, and if you’re worried that I’ll take ill and cancel the ball you have no cause for concern. I’ve told Hopkins that even if I drop dead he’s still to roll out the awnings and ice the champagne.”
This recitation evidently did nothing to convince her of his well-being, because she frowned more deeply. “If you say so, Pembroke.”
“I do say so. Do you have Aurelia’s gown finished?” He was delighted that he thought to misremember the girl’s name.
She paid this rudeness no attention. She never did, damn her. “The modiste sent it over last week. She’ll never be a beauty but she’ll have nothing to be ashamed of.”
Nothing to be ashamed of! The child of a—well, never mind. “Mr. Selby finds nothing amiss with her appearance. I dare say Angelica has mentioned him to you?” How manyAnames could he think of, he wondered?
“Mr. Selby? Of course Amelia mentioned him. Everyone has. I’ve never heard anyone mentioned as often as Mr. and Miss Selby, not even when Byron’s friend ran off with that poor girl.”
Alistair neither knew nor cared about Byron’s lecherous friend; as far as he knew, that entire set crawled from bed to bed and Mrs. Allenby ought to know better than to associate with them. “It doesn’t bother you that your daughter might fall in love with a nobody from Northumberland? I doubt he has two thousand a year.”
She was silent for a moment, regarding him with a look he couldn’t decipher. “I’ll be glad to see my children settled happily and honorably, my lord. I had heard that you were particular friends with Mr. Selby, so I’m surprised to hear you refer to him in those terms. In fact, I came here today to see if you knew any reason why I ought to warn Amelia away from him.”
He felt his cheeks heat with shame and anger. She was right, this infernal woman. He shouldn’t refer to Robin in such a way. “I know of no reason why he wouldn’t be an eligible husband,” he forced himself to say. It was a lie, but he couldn’t very well go about announcing what he and Robin had gotten up to on the settee the other night.
She nodded. “Thank you for that.”
“Has he made an offer for her?” He felt like he was wrenching the words out of his chest, but he had to know the answer. Could that be why Robin had been avoiding him?
“No, no. Nothing like that. As far as I know he isn’t even courting her.” Her voice held a note of something altogether too much like reassurance, too much like sympathy.
Still, relief washed over him. If he had, even inadvertently, dallied with a person who had been promised to another, he would have been brought to a new level of shame. That particular transgression was a bit too similar to his father’s misdeeds.
He rang the bell for a footman to see Mrs. Allenby out. He didn’t trust himself to remain civil any longer today, and doubted whether he had managed it terribly well so far.
The troubling thing was that even if Robin didn’t marry Amelia Allenby, he’d marry someone else. He’d have to. That godforsaken estate in the wilds of Northumberland was entailed. Robin needed an heir, otherwise the property would pass to that red-faced cousin. The idea of seeing Robin betrothed or married was enough to make him feel sick. Was he jealous of some future Selby bride? How lowering.
He sat back down at his desk and attempted to write Robin a note. Something brief and friendly, just the sort of thing you write another man after licking his tongue on your sofa.
When Hopkins announced another visitor he was entirely relieved to have an excuse to stop. It was his solicitor, Nivins.
“It’s about Miss Selby,” Nivins said, sitting too stiffly in the chair across from Alistair. “A delicate matter, you see.”
Alistair suppressed a groan. “She’s only 18. Has she managed to get herself involved in a scandal already?”
The solicitor let out a breath that almost sounded like a whimper. “Ah, so she is 18. That was what I came to ask.”
“Yes, she turned 18 in this past November, according to her brother.”
“My lord, that would put the date of her birth as November 1799.”
“And what of it?” Alistair could add and subtract as well as the next person. He didn’t pay his solicitor for that service.
“The late marquess was, if you recall, not present in England at the time. He left in 1798.” He shuffled through the sheaf of paper he had on his lap. “Here is a letter in his own hand from November of 1799 written in Padua, directed to my office. Here is another in December of that same year from Milan. And several written in the first part of the year 1800, all from various parts of Italy.”
And all undoubtedly requesting funds. The solicitor’s recitation of dates meant something, but try as he might Alistair couldn’t grasp the point. The meaning eluded him.
Nivins placed the letters on Alistair’s desk with an unsteady hand. “As you no doubt recall, he did not return to England until the autumn of that year.”
