Page 40 of Gentleman Jim

St. Clare made for the library. If his grandfather wanted to see him so urgently, it was nothing to the good. Best to get it over with.

He entered without knocking, finding his grandfather seated behind his carved mahogany desk. His head was bent over what looked to be a newspaper.

“You wished to see me?” St. Clare crossed the thickly carpeted floor to stand in front of him.

The library at Grosvenor Square was a masculine room, smelling of pipe smoke and leather. Wooden shelves lined the walls, sagging under the weight of old books and new ones. Volumes on travel, archaeology, and natural history abounded, stacked on every available surface. They were complemented by inlaid tables draped in maps of the world, and a magnificent terrestrial globe standing in a tall carved frame.

Allendale looked up from his paper. He scowled. “Back at last, are you?” He gestured to the leather-upholstered chair in front of his desk. “Sit.”

St. Clare sat down. “You expected me sooner? I can’t think why.” His grandfather had known he was going to Tattersall’s this morning, and then to Jackson’s Saloon after that. “We agreed at breakfast that we’d dine together before attending Lady Colchester’s ball.”

“That was this morning. Before I saw this.” Allendale thrust his newspaper across the desk.

St. Clare retrieved and opened it. But it wasn’t a newspaper at all. It was a gossip rag. One of the most unsavory, too. A veritable scandal sheet. He skimmed the small, smudged black print before looking up at his grandfather with a scowl. “What—”

“The second page,” Allendale said. “Quarter of the way down. Under that bit about the opera dancer.”

St. Clare looked again. This time he saw it. Indeed, he wondered that he hadn’t noticed it the first time. It was written there, plain as day, under the heading Tittle Tattle of the Fashionable World:

At long last, the Earl of A— has returned from exile, accompanied by his golden heir. But was the mysterious Lord S— born on the right side of the blanket?

St. Clare lowered the paper back to the desk. A chill settled into his veins. “Is that all?”

“What? Not pointed enough, for you? Never fear, my boy. It soon will be.” Allendale tapped the offending report with his finger. “This is how it always begins. Small. Just a few lines of suggestion. Of innuendo. But it won’t be small for long. Not if Lavinia and her boy have anything to say about it.”

“You hold them responsible?”

“Who else?”

St. Clare was silent. Who else indeed.

Allendale’s eyes narrowed. “You haven’t been doing anything you shouldn’t have, have you?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I warned you, no more dueling with country squires. No more personal vendettas. You and I have bigger matters to contend with.”

“So you’ve said.”

Allendale leaned across his desk. His face reddened. “By heaven, if you’ve faltered—”

“Calm yourself,” St. Clare said. “There have been no more duels. Nothing that would cause remark.”

Indeed, as far as he was aware, Burton-Smythe was still holed up in his rooms in St. James’s Street, nursing his wounds. St. Clare looked forward to the moment when he emerged.

“I told you to be careful,” Allendale said, frowning. “All you must do is find a bride and secure the title. I’ve drawn up a list. Suitable ladies of breeding years. Each of them of good stock.” He withdrew a sheet of paper from a drawer of his desk and extended it to St. Clare. “You met several at the theater last week, Miss Steele among them.”

St. Clare took the paper and set it down, unread. “I told you, I’ll find my own bride.”

“And what efforts have you made in that regard? Have you called on Miss Steele? On the dowager’s granddaughters? Even that young chit, Mattingly’s sister, might do if you insist upon having her. Only make up your mind—”

“I have made up my mind,” St. Clare said with uncharacteristic heat.

Allendale came to attention. “And? What’s the gel’s name?”

“Miss Margaret Honeywell.”

It was in this very room she’d appeared to him not two weeks before, cloaked in a shapeless gown, her face shadowed in the firelight. He’d caught her in his arms as she swooned. Had held her so very close to his breast. He’d understood then what he knew now absolutely. There could be no one else. No other lady, save her.