Page 57

Hell’s knees. If Humphrey Feltham were losing his shirt, then that could only mean annoyance for Sophronia down the road. Rowden ought to leave them to it and wash his hands of the business. Sophronia’s affairs were none of his concern; she hadn’t made them his responsibility before, and she’d refuse his help now. Let Feltham be as careless as he liked and learn to live with the consequences. Rowden would be damned before he brought out the trick shoe in service of such a scoundrel.

He wanted to go straight to Sophronia and warn her, but he made himself walk down the hallway that held the private parlors, conducive to small conversations or reading the newspapers in quiet. The scent of an opium pipe reached him before he entered the room. He’d left Bosley strict instructions that Giles was not to be brought opium, and was only to be served watered wine.

“Where did you get that?” he demanded of his cousin.

Giles sank into the thick upholstery of the chair, puffing on the enamel pipe. Before him on the table stood the small lamp he was using to heat the opium. “Friend,” he said around the stem, his eyes heavy-lidded, his smile sweet and satisfied.

Rowden glared at Foster in the opposite chair, who shook his head. Foster had a glass of what looked like whisky on the table near his elbow and a copy of The Times on his knee. “Not I.”

Rowden gritted his teeth. “Keeling?”

“Off to billiards.” Foster shrugged.

Rowden swung his glare back to his cousin. “You smoke too much.”

“Need it after a night like this one,” Giles said. “Settles my nerves.”

Rowden stiffened. “What happened? Something with Ro—Sophronia?”

“Working up to ask the pater something,” Giles said with a morose puff. “On the rampage, so tonight’s not it.”

“What’s he on a rampage about?”

Giles shrugged. “The usual. I’m a parasite and an aggravation, you’re an arrogant boor, and the whole world is set in all its forms to plague him, et cetera et cetera.” He puffed again.

“I’ll try talking to him,” Rowden said, though he didn’t know what about. His uncle rarely conversed with Rowden in the most civil fashion, and never as a confidante.

Foster unfolded his paper. “Before you barrel off. Grenville’s looking for a man to send to the Helvetic Republic.” The Swiss Confederacy had lately fallen to sympathizers of the French Directory and all its revolutionary, expansionist ambitions. “Wants a set of eyes there to tell us how long the French sympathies are likely to last. How’s your French?”

“Passable, though I don’t know any of the Swiss dialects.”

“Doubt you’d need it. We only need to know how the land lies, and you seem able to work your way into places another agent can’t.”

“Because I’m not an agent, and Grenville isn’t obliged to pay my way. Tell him I’ll consider it.” If Rowden left for the Continent, he could escape all this: Giles’s sodden ennui, his uncle’s temper, Sophronia’s fresh and scalding rejection.

Foster raised his brows. “You’ll go?”

“I’ll think about it. I could use a chance to get away.” Rowden glared at his cousin. “Better than watching this one obliterate himself as if he hasn’t anything better to do.”

Giles removed the stem from his mouth, hurt entering his glazed eyes. “What is there to do, then?”

“Activity,” Rowden snapped. “Interests. Anything but sit around and wait to inherit.”

Giles nibbled the stem thoughtfully. “Chance I’d like to travel⁠—”

“No,” Rowden said. “Not with me. Your father would never permit you out of his sight anyway.” The whole point was to escape all this. Foster’s proposal offered the answer to the tangled snare of his feelings. Nothing was forcing him to stay here and endure Sophronia’s dismissal.

Or worse, watch her take an interest in another man.

The tug toward the women’s side of the establishment was unbearable, so Rowden allowed himself to enter the gaming parlor, noting the number of ladies at play, enjoying themselves and the company of the gentlemen they’d chosen to attend them. This was what he’d wanted to build, and yet the sight smarted, all the elegant women flirting with their suitors of choice.

Sophronia would never flirt so with him. She could kiss him as if she were sipping his life’s breath from his mouth, and then she could ride home beside him in silence and walk before him into the breakfast parlor of his house as if she’d never stirred the fires of passion in him, nor let the same fires awaken within herself.

Fanny noticed him instantly; Rowden felt her awareness. She pretended not to watch him as he moved around the room, but her laughter grew brighter, her dimples showing as she shed amused and doting smiles on her companion. Little wonder Humphrey Feltham was enchanted; the full force of Fanny’s smile, and her bosom, was a sight to behold.

It moved Rowden not at all. Not after he’d held Sophronia in his arms, finally.

“I thought you in debt to your tailor already, Feltham,” Rowden remarked as he paused beside the pair at the roulette table. “You wouldn’t be racking up debts to the Albion as well?”