Of course, family tradition meant little any longer to a family now so torn and tattered. Three lives ripped away at once. Three good, solid men gone forever, leaving behind grieving wives and two devastated little girls in mourning for their father. Leaving the title in the hands of the scapegrace youngest son who had never been meant to wear it.
The shame upon Mother’s face—on those rare occasions she deigned even to look upon him—made him all to aware that he would fall forever short in her eyes.
Anthony hadn’t even held it against her, for he felt the same. Not half worthy enough to fill the shoes of those who had come before him.
“Warrington, isn’t it?”
Anthony jerked, his fingers clenching upon his empty glass. Somehow he bit back the instinctive rebuke to the interloper who had come up upon his blind side—a blond man with one hand curled around the silver handle of a cane. “I prefer Captain Sharp,” Anthony said, striving to keep the scowl from his face.
By the lift of the man’s brows, this was an unanticipated response. “Really? Can’t say I know of many who wouldn’t insist upon a title if they had one to claim.” The man abandoned the cane to lean it against Anthony’s table and turned to seize the back of a chair going spare at a nearby table, either oblivious of or indifferent to the exasperated indignation of the gentlemen seated there. The legs of the chair produced a harsh scraping sound as he dragged them across the floor and spun the chair about to position it at Anthony’s table, at which he took a seat as casually as if he had been given an engraved invitation to do so. “Heard you been makin’ certain inquiries.”
The scowl Anthony had contrived to vanquish spread across his face anyway. “In what way are my inquiries—whatever they might happen to be—any of your concern?” And how had this man heard of them?He had the clothing and the general affect of a gentleman, but his speech slipped indiscriminately between genteel and coarse. How had he gained admittance to this club?
“They concern me when they also concern a woman I count among my friends,” the man said with a shrug.
Anthony peered past the man’s shoulder to the gentlemen at the neighboring table from which the man had stolen the chair, both of whom cast the occasional annoyed glance toward them. “And do you countthemamongst your friends?” he asked, indicating the table with a subtle nod.
“Worse,” the man said. “Brothers-in-law. Got an awful lot of ‘em. Every one of ‘em titled, if you can believe it. I put in an appearance here now and again to keep my wife happy. And to rile up her family, when it suits me. It’s great fun.” The man’s boot thumped Anthony’s chair as he stretched his legs out and assumed a posture of indolence. “Now, about Charity.”
Anthony did not know whether to be aghast or impressed at the man’s temerity. “Who the devilareyou?” he blurted out.
The man produced a shrill whistle of surprise, which attracted more than a few disapproving looks. “You’ve not been in England long then, I take it,” he said. “I’m Chris Moore. Notorious ne’er-do-well, former spy, and current gentleman of leisure. What do ye want wiv Charity, Captain Sharp? Ye lookin’ fer a mistress?”
“For the love of God, keep your damned voice down,” Anthony snarled. It had been bad enough that the few people of whom he’d made subtle inquiries had all cast him pitying looks, as if to wordlessly convey that even if hedidmanage to gain an introduction to Miss Charity Nightingale, his face alone precluded any offer of patronage from being accepted.
“If you are seeking a mistress, I’d encourage you to look elsewhere,” Chris said.
A sneer curled the corner of Anthony’s lips. “What? Am I too ugly, then?”
Those blond brows lifted once more, that sharp blue gaze turning assessing, and Anthony had the strangest sensation that he had been—measured. Like a tailor would with a tape. A weakness identified and catalogued. “I’ll own you ain’t what anyone would call ‘andsome,” Chris said as his fingertips tapped out a rhythm on the surface of the table. “Charity’s retired. ‘As been for some time now, though it’s not stopped some particularly persistent blokes from sniffin’ round her skirts. So when I find ‘em, I”—Chris shrugged in a way that was more sharp than blasé, more practiced,more dangerous—“encourage‘em to look elsewhere. Sometimes gently-like. Sometimes not so gently. Depends on the bloke. ‘Ow am I to encourage you, then?”
“And how does your wife feel about your interest in a former courtesan?”
“Oh, she and Charity are thick as thieves, they are. Must be twice a week at least Charity’s ‘round mine for tea or some other such nonsense.” A nonchalant roll of his shoulders. “Even when Charity was my mistress, they got on like a house on fire. But she’s not only my wife’s friend, you see. She’s mine, and I’d take it ill—”
“She’smywife.” Anthony hissed the words in rough whisper, conscious of potential eavesdroppers. “I’m not seeking a damned mistress. I am seeking the woman I married half a lifetime ago.”
Chris snorted, an inelegant sound that served to punctuate the disbelief scrawled across his face. A long silence drew out between them, growing more fraught and tense with each moment that Anthony failed to retract the claim. At last Chris said, “Fucking hell. You’re in earnest.” He blew out a breath, his brows arched toward his hairline. “You’re the bloke. The one what gives her nightmares.”
If aught kept her up at night, it was hardly likely to be the husband she’d not seen in damned close to two decades. But the war—the things they had seen—yes, that would keep a body up at night. It had kept him up too many nights to count.
“Suppose that makes her a duchess, then,” Chris said with a gusty sigh.
Yes, Anthony supposed it did. “So you can see, then, why it is necessary that I find her,” he said. “If you’ll give me her direction.”
“I won’t.” The blasted man flicked a bit of imaginary lint off his sleeve. “Leastwise, until I talk to her m’self. Frankly, Captain Sharp, I don’t care whether ye’re seeking a mistress or a wife, you’ve still got no business with her unless she says you have.”
Anthony could have happily put his fist through the man’s smarmy face. “I’ve the weight of the law on my side—”
“Ask me how much the law means to me,” Chris invited. “A suggestion for the future: one needn’t find a wife who’s not been lost in the first place.”
“I thought she was dead. I learned differently only days ago.” Probably, he imagined, she’d thought the same. There had been so many deaths—toomany deaths. In war, in sickness. It had been a blasted miracle he’d survived. Weeks of illness caused by his own putrefying flesh, sliding in and out ofdelirium. He’d not learned she’d been afflicted with cholera until the worst of his own illness had passed.
For months he’d been too weak to go looking, had assumed she would have applied to his family for support if she had survived, to one of his superior officers—to anyone who had known of their marriage. That someone would have passed word of her survival along to him. But it had never happened.
He’d thought himself a widower at the age of one and twenty. A widower with a face so ruined he’d been unable even to glance at himself in a mirror. There had seemed little point in returning home, and less still to which to return. So he hadn’t. He’d sold his commission and lived off of the proceeds. Traveled the continent. Eventually leased a little cottage in the countryside of Tuscany.
Kept to himself, mostly. At least until he’d been summoned home once again.
