Wicked Wager

When she’d literally stumbled over Nelthorpe that day, she’d been frantic with worry, knowing Garrett would have returned to her unless he were gravely wounded—or dead. She’d expended as little time as possible seeing Nelthorpe received treatment before resuming her search for him.

And after she found her husband—confirming her worst fears about his condition—she’d devoted three weeks to the ultimately losing battle to save him. Numb, devastated, denying, she’d continued on nursing other survivors until, realizing she must be with child, she’d slowed her pace. Even then, she’d not been able to make herself leave the room she’d shared with Garrett or her life as a soldier’s wife and daughter, the only life she’d known.

Colonel’s daughter indeed! Shame deepening, she acknowledged that not once in all her weeks in Belgium had she thought to inquire about Nelthorpe’s fate after he’d been carried away that awful afternoon. This, for a man who had once been under her father’s command.

Regardless of what might have transpired between them, Father would have expected better of her than that.

Gauging by the trouble it had given Nelthorpe to navigate the stairs, she knew from her nursing experience that simply remaining upright must be akin to torture. Seized by conflicting emotions, she could not seem to tear her gaze from where he remained stoically standing, evidently awaiting the return of his horse.

The nurse in her urged her to rush downstairs and check his condition. The woman and the patriot ached for the obvious pain he was suffering.

The soldier in her saluted the pride and fortitude that had prompted him to mask his injuries and come to her aid, despite what it must have cost him to restrain the widow who’d attacked her.

She would not shame that pride by revealing that she’d observed him in his weakness.

When finally a groom appeared leading a tall gelding, she exhaled with relief. Apparently he’d mastered mounting and riding, for he managed those tasks without a falter.

Nelthorpe still rode with the same effortless grace she remembered from observing him in the Peninsula. Indeed, seeing him in the saddle, she would never have suspected his injury.

Long after he guided his mount out of sight, Jenna remained at the window, staring into the afternoon brightness as she recalled their conversation and each detail of his appearance and expression.

It appeared her first assessment had been correct. Anthony Nelthorpe had done more than just exchange his swagger for a limp.

And she owed him another apology.

IN LATE AFTERNOON of the following day, Tony Nelthorpe sat tying his cravat in preparation for dining at his club.

He’d been relieved to discover upon waking that, despite the wretched condition in which he’d returned home yesterday, he was now able to walk fairly well—so his exertions at the Fairchild townhouse had not, as he’d feared, set back his recovery. Which meant, praise heaven, that his leg must be healing at last.

Heaven knows, he’d seen little evidence of it yesterday. After having secluded himself at home for several weeks while he practiced walking, he’d decided it was time to attempt his first excursion into Society—at the reception being given to honor Colonel Garrett Fairchild.

Much as he might deserve Jenna’s disdain, he rather dreaded receiving it, so the Fairchild’s reception provided an ideal opportunity to meet her and attempt to offer his thanks. She would, he speculated, be less likely to publicly insult a Waterloo veteran during a reception honoring her husband’s military service.

Regardless of her opinion of this particular soldier.

He’d just been congratulating himself on having actually spoken with her—and on managing the stairs without limping too dreadfully—when that widow assaulted her. His whole leg flaming in agony by the time that episode concluded, he had only the haziest of memories of the ride home, his dwindling strength being invested in the battle to remain conscious and in the saddle.

Out of yesterday’s agony one bit of good news had arisen, he thought with a smile. Once he had progressed beyond simple survival, he had grown concerned that his amorous inclinations seemed to have been snuffed out by the same injuries that had shattered his knee. Having had no blunt to test the fact, even if he’d had the desire, he’d relegated that worry to the back of his mind.

But a few moments in company with Jenna Fairchild had proven that though his longer members might never fully recover, his shorter one now functioned perfectly. Jenna Montague had roused his senses from the first day they met and time, it seemed, had not dimmed that instinctive response. Indeed, her appeal was if anything stronger—for Jenna was no longer an untried girl, but a widow who had tasted passion’s full measure.

And, he was certain, she’d sensed as well as he the almost tactile pull between them yesterday. Though not surprisingly, she was no more willing to recognize it than she’d been three years ago.

Having nothing better to do at the moment, he might just have to live down to her expectation that he was planning to pester her about marrying him. His grin widened as a certain part of his anatomy offered solid support to the idea of pursuing Jenna Montague.

He was making no other progress. After three weeks at home, he still didn’t know the current status of the Nelthorpe finances, his father having not yet seen fit to meet him. Anger flared and he fanned it, irritated at how much hurt lurked beneath.

But then, when had the earl ever paid any attention to his only son’s activities, no matter how scandalous? Perhaps because Lord Hunsdon had always been too occupied with even more scandalous activities himself.

Well, Tony was no longer a stripling waiting with pathetic eagerness for any crumb of parental attention. As heir to the Hunsdon earldom, he had a right to know how things stood with the estate he would one day inherit. Though by all the signs, his father would bequeath him little more than a pack of debts and a soiled reputation.

Dusting off his beaver hat, he limped out. He’d return early enough to catch his father before the earl began his evening’s celebrations, hopefully while Hunsdon was sober enough to converse with some intelligence.

Three years ago, Tony had associated with a group of dissolute young men with whom he’d indulged in highstakes gaming and dissipated revelry. Though during his three weeks of recovery, he had not called on any of them, the fact that he had returned to England would have been speedily telegraphed to the ton through the infallible network of servants’ gossip.

With a sense of anticipation sharpened by unease, he hailed a hackney to White’s. Would the members there greet him as a lost sheep returned—or see only the black sheep who’d disgraced himself by fleeing England with his debts of honor unpaid?

Despite his soldier’s service, he suspected that a bad reputation, thoroughly earned, would prove long-lived.

Certainly Lane Fairchild had shown yesterday in what little regard he held Viscount Nelthorpe.

Half an hour later, his heart pounding—and not just, he knew, from exertion of having climbed yet another infernal flight of stairs—he stood at White’s, scanning the occupants. Spotting two of his former compatriots seated around a bottle, he limped toward them.

Lord St. Ives noticed his approach and raised his quizzing glass. “Can it be?” he asked. “Despite that drunken sailor’s gait, the face is familiar. As I live and breathe, I do believe ’tis Tony Nelthorpe!”

Aldous Wexley looked over in surprise. “Why, so ’tis. Didn’t I hear you’d died after that great battle over in France, Nelthorpe? Watergreen or Watermarket—”

“Waterloo,” Tony inserted.

“Ah, yes. Months ago now, though.” Wexley waved a dismissive hand.

“So, Tony, tell us all about it, do! Soldiering bravely to keep England safe for—” St. Ives gestured with one languid hand “—reprobates like us.”

“Damme, Grantham told me that after he joined up, he was informed he might travel with only two trunks in his baggage,” Wexley said. “Two! Under such circumstances, how could a gentleman maintain a proper appearance?”

“There is the small matter of transporting food and munitions,” Tony observed dryly.

“I hear the mud was dreadful,” St. Ives said. “And the blood! Worse than a cockfight, I should imagine.”

Against his will, Tony’s mind returned to the battlefield as he’d seen it from his resting place beneath the two Polish lancers he’d killed after a cuirassier cut him off his horse: a sodden, muddy field of fallen men, some still, some writhing, under a pall of smoke reflected in the puddle whose reddened water lapped at his chin…

A shudder ran through him as bile rose in his throat. “Much worse than a cockfight.”

“Speaking of,” Wexley said with a broad wink, “have you seen the new dancers at Covent Garden? There’s a brown-haired chit who reminds me of my last ladybird. Such ankles! Such thighs!”

“You must present me to her tonight,” St. Ives replied. “Or there’s that new hell that just opened on Russell Street. Offers fine brandy and deep play, Nelthorpe, if you’d like to join me there. As I recall, you were a bit under the hatches when you left this sceptered isle.”

Wexley raised his glass. “To each his own vice.”

“Let’s broach another bottle before we go our separate ways, gentlemen.” St. Ives lifted his glass to Tony. “In honor of our dear Nelthorpe’s return from the dead.”

Tony silently returned the salute, the momentary warmth he’d felt at their offering a bottle in his honor swiftly dying. They don’t really want to know what happened in Portugal or the Pyranees or on the plain at Waterloo. Nor would they understand, even if you could find words to describe it.

As the chat continued through another bottle and then a third, talk of wagers and women punctuated by an argument between St. Ives and Wexley over the proper trimming of a waistcoat, Tony felt more and more isolated.

Once he had sat here, guzzling and chatting and thinking like these men, oblivious to anything beyond the streets of Mayfair. But the man who’d done so had died somewhere between the barren, windswept canyons of Spain and the bloody fields of Belgium.

Tony didn’t know who had taken his place. But whoever that man was, he no longer fit in here.