“Then we have nothing more to say, do we?”
He moved to depart, but her voice stopped him. “There is one other thing.”
“Yes?”
“I am obliged to remind you of the confidentiality agreement you signed upon becoming a member of the Savoy board.”
“Of course.” He gave a humorless laugh, somehow not surprised that she would have the temerity to bring that up now. Helen was first, last, and always a hardheaded woman of business. “So like you to remind me.”
“You are legally pledged to silence regarding all board activities,” she went on doggedly. “Your resignation does not change that.”
“I fully understand the contracts I signed, Helen. There is no need to remind me of them. And since trust has now been broken on both sides, I suggest Richard make me an offer to buy my shares in the Bainbridge, for I see no way that a partnership between us can remain viable. Goodbye, Helen.”
He jerked open the door and left the study, stalking by the other gentlemen putting on their coats and exiting the house without a backward glance.
The spring air was crisp and cold, but as he walked back to the Savoy, it did nothing to cool his blood. And when he heard the voice of the odious Lord Astonby behind him, his temper once again began ratcheting upward.
“Hard lines, Calderon.”
Simon glanced over his shoulder to find the other man behind him, along with Lord Melville. Reminding himself it was pointless to engage in a quarrel now, he merely shrugged and kept walking.
“We would have liked to vote with you, old chap,” Astonby said, raising his voice to be sure his words carried to Simon’s ear over the clatter of London traffic. “Fellow peer and all that. But we just couldn’t see our way clear.”
“No woman,” Melville added, “should work for a living. Particularly a lady. Highly inappropriate.”
Simon could have pointed out that down below the ivory tower these two lived in, plenty of women worked, some because they had to, and some because they found it enjoyable. But the other two were clearly itching for a quarrel, and he had far more important things to do than accommodate them. He set his jaw and kept walking.
“Still,” Astonby continued, “Lady Stratham will appreciate your efforts on her behalf. It seems she has a knight in shining armor. But, really, Calderon, is she worth it?”
“Might be,” Melville put in. “Lady Stratham’s a bit long in the tooth at thirty-three, but still a beautiful woman.”
“Dangerous, though,” Astonby added. “Deadly, in fact, if her poor husbands are anything to go by.”
Goaded beyond bearing, Simon decided he could spare a minute to put this spoiled brat in his place. He stopped and turned around,causing the other two to halt as well. “Is there a point to all this commentary?” he asked.
“Concern,” Astonby replied, belying that answer with a grin. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
Simon smiled back at him. “More than you do, I imagine.”
This little jab was ignored. “You’re a brave man, Calderon,” the earl told him, snickering like a schoolboy. “I’ll give you that.”
“I’m not sure what has inspired this compliment,” Simon replied, though he knew precisely. “But whatever it is, it seems to amuse you. Care to let me in on the joke?”
“Don’t be coy. Plain as day you want to be husband number four. Most of us suspected something like that was in the wind, of course, when we saw you in her box at the opera, but last night when you called on me, suspicion became fact. Personally, I wouldn’t choose to begin my courtship of a woman by trying to salvage her employment, but to each his own. I suppose to a man barely elevated out of the gutter, a wife with a career isn’t so revolutionary.”
That was, he supposed, meant to be an insult. What Astonby didn’t seem to realize was that he didn’t give a damn what anyone thought of him. Delia, however, was a different matter entirely.
Before he could reply, however, Astonby spoke again. “After you left, I immediately went to White’s and placed a bet on it. I daresay we all did.”
Lord Melville nodded in assent, and though Simon found it rather galling to think his efforts on Delia’s behalf had brought about no better result than a flurry of bets about his life expectancy, even that wasn’t what was causing his blood to boil at this moment.
“I gave you a year and a half after the vows.” Astonby clapped him on the arm as if they were old friends. “Do be careful. I’d hate to see anything happen to you.”
“Right now, Astonby,” he said pleasantly, “I’m not the one in danger.”
At this unmistakable warning, the earl’s grin faltered a bit, but unfortunately, he didn’t take heed. “Before you walk down the aisle, old chap, might I suggest life insurance? She is the black widow, after all.”
Before Simon even realized what he was doing, his fist had connected with Astonby’s jaw in a painful but thoroughly satisfying thwack that wiped that loathsome grin from the earl’s face and sent him to the pavement. Simon had no time to savor his victory before Lord Melville retaliated on his friend’s behalf, landing a hard, smashing uppercut to Simon’s jaw.
