“What’s this? You think I’m smart?”
“Be quiet, Corrie,” Jason said. “Miss Carrick?”
Hallie was still too angry with him to think straight, and now he was sitting at his ease in a damned chair. What had Corrie said? She managed to get herself under control. She became aware that all the Sherbrookes were strewn about the large drawing room, looking on, obviously enjoying themselves at her expense. “Corrie said you were one of the more moral men she knew and I was to stop carping.”
There was a lovely moment of silence.
“You really said that about me, Corrie?” Jason asked.
“It’s the truth,” Corrie said.
James said, “Well, maybe she is pretty smart after all. Just look at the twins she produced. You waltzed with them, Jason, saw how graceful and enthusiastic they were. It was Corrie who taught them how to dance.”
Corrie laughed. “Yes, they nearly float, they are so light on their feet.”
Hallie felt bludgeoned to the carpet. They were all laughing, happy as larks, and her role, which she was playing superbly well, was that of an ill-bred harridan.
Jason looked at Hallie for a long moment. “If you are ready to listen to me now, Miss Carrick?”
“Yes, I am ready.”
“It isn’t good news.”
“I wasn’t expecting any,” she said.
Douglas didn’t like the look on his son’s set face. Something was very wrong. It was hard not to leap right in and protect him, but he forced himself to say nothing. He walked to his favorite wing chair and sat down opposite his son. Alex moved to stand next to him, her hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her, smiled, and pulled her down onto his lap.
As for James, he studied his twin’s face. Like his father, he didn’t like what he saw. He didn’t want his brother to be unhappy, dammit, he wanted him to have Lyon ’s Gate. He wanted him to have what he deserved and that was whatever he wanted. James didn’t want his twin to leave again. The excitement in Jason’s eyes when he’d walked into the Lyon ’s Gate stables had made James want to dance. He heard the fear in his own voice as he said, “What is it, Jase? What is the bad news?”
Jason sighed, rubbed the back of his neck. “It turns out Thomas Hoverton had already sold Lyon ’s Gate to a Mr. Benjamin Chartley of Manchester for a modest sum of money. He hadn’t bothered to notify Mr. Clark, his solicitor here in London. When Miss Carrick showed up on Thomas’s doorstep, he saw his opportunity and took it. When he heard from his solicitor the following day that he’d sold Lyon ’s Gate to yet another buyer, Thomas decided it would be best for his health if he left for the Continent that very evening. Of course, what’s really important here is that Mr. Chartley now owns Lyon ’s Gate.”
The silence in the room was absolute.
“Well,” his father said finally, “I didn’t think Thomas Hoverton had the guts for this sort of thing.”
Alex said, “He must have been very desperate. And to leave England, that is indeed a surprise.”
Hallie said nothing; she walked to the fireplace, stared down at the empty grate, and kicked a log.
Jason said to her back, “I’m sorry, Miss Carrick. I know this comes as quite a shock. It did to me as well.”
She turned to face him. “I’m leaving tomorrow morning to find that little worm and shoot him. I will get my money back, and yours as well, Mr. Sherbrooke, since you are the one who discovered what he’d done so quickly.” She picked up her skirts and walked quickly from the drawing room.
Alex said, “That was a fine exit, but she doesn’t know where her bedchamber is.” She regretfully left her husband’s lap and hurried after her.
“What are you going to do, Jase?”
“I’ve already contacted Mr. Chartley. He is willing to sell me Lyon ’s Gate, but the price has now doubled. He owns three successful factories in Manchester. He knows desperation when he sees it.”
Douglas said, a dark eyebrow raised a good inch, “Does the fellow know who you are?”
“Well, he knows that I’m Jason Sherbrooke. Does he know that I’m your son? If he didn’t, he probably does now. But what difference would that make in any case?”
Douglas smiled at his innocent boy. “The first thing we need to know is why Mr. Benjamin Chartley, factory owner, is in London. I’m thinking it’s very likely he has hopes to enter London society. More than likely he has a daughter of marriageable age. If that is the case, we’ve got him.”
“But I don’t-”
“Jason, he will sell you Lyon’s Gate at the price he paid for it or he will find every door in London closed to him. Then I’ll consider ruining him.”
Jason laughed. “Now, aren’t I a moron for not thinking of that?”
Douglas said, “You would have, given a couple more hours. You’ve been in America too long. Do you really think Miss Carrick is off for France to bring Thomas Hoverton to ground?”
“I wouldn’t doubt it. I keep telling her that she’s more American than English and this certainly proves it. It’s exactly what Jessie Wyndham would do. Give her a whiff of a villain and she’d be off. She’d take at least two guns with her, the whip she uses on jockeys who don’t play fair on the racetrack, and a knife in her boot, strapped to her ankle.” He laughed, couldn’t help himself, and shook his head. “What a debacle.”
Corrie said, “It is something we never considered. I like Hallie, but let me be painfully honest here. I was perfectly ready to have her kidnapped and removed to the Shetland islands. I fancy she could spruce up one of those ancient Viking huts and be perfectly content raising the local ponies.”
The twins’ nanny appeared suddenly in the doorway, looking harried, nervous, and resolute. James and Corrie were on their feet. “Yes, Mrs. Macklin? Is something wrong?”
Mrs. Macklin said, “No, no, don’t worry, my lord. It’s just that Master Everett wants to waltz.”
“Waltz?”
“Yes, my lord. With his uncle.”
At that moment, they heard a loud yell.
“He is rather insistent,” said Mrs. Macklin over another yell that made James’s left eye twitch.
Corrie said, “You waltz very well, Eliza. Why don’t you take him for a spin around the nursery?”
“Master Everett says I’m not man enough to do it right,” said Mrs. Macklin.
“Oh dear,” Corrie said. “It’s begun already?”
“Master Everett says my feet don’t cover enough ground.”
Jason was laughing. “Well, who can play the piano whilst I dance with Everett?”
His mother appeared in the doorway, Willicombe behind her, a large silver tray on his arms. Alex said, “I’ll do it. Goodness, Everett ’s gotten bigger in the last day and a half.”
“We’re off then to the music room. Mrs. Macklin, what about his brother?”
“Master Douglas is currently chewing on Wilson ’s bone and the puppy is trying to drag it away from him.”
Corrie said, “He is only seven weeks old, a Dandie Dinmont terrier, so ugly and precious all you want is to hug him until he creaks. Wilson and Douglas are good friends.”
“More ugly than precious,” James said. “But he fits quite nicely against my neck at night.”
Mrs. Macklin said, “I’m sorry, my lord, but Wilson slept against my neck last night.”
“Well, Wilson is in a new house,” Corrie said. “We’ll see whose neck he seeks out tonight.”
“Unfortunately,” the earl said, “it would appear that Douglas also likes to eat from the puppy’s bowl.”
“Oh dear,” Mrs. Macklin said, “and here I hid Wilson ’s bowl underneath Everett ’s bed.”
Smacked in the face at the same time by both the absurd and the ridiculous, Jason thought as he hauled Everett off to the music room, the little boy kicking his legs and waving his arms and singing at the top of his lungs in Jason’s right ear. James and Corrie went with Mrs. Macklin to pull the bone out of Douglas ’s mouth all while slipping the new puppy another one. Neither of them doubted Douglas would be waltzing with his uncle in under five minutes.
As for Hallie Carrick, she was upstairs in a lovely bedchamber, changing into her oldest clothes.
