Duel of Hearts (4 page)

For a moment Tony was stunned. “Am I to understand you are offering me your daughter, Mr. Cole?” he asked when he found his voice.

The old man nodded. “Good business arrangement for you—your title for my money. But if you wasn't interested, then let me tell you that there's an earl that's pretty badly dipped, maybe worse than you.”

“Mr. Cole—”

“Ain't too high in the instep for the likes of Jeptha Cole, are you? You know, if you wasn't such a handsome devil, I'd go for him anyway. I mean, an earl's an earl, ain't he? And I know he'd take my offer—headed for debtors' jail, for one thing.” His eyes were fixed on Tony's face as though he meant to see his thoughts. “But there's one thing wrong with him: he ain't the sort of husband to take a young girl's fancy, if you take my meaning, and you, me fine buck, fit that bill.”

Stunned by the offer, it took Tony several seconds to realize Cole was indeed serious. Impatient at the delay, the old man snapped, “What think you—she ain't good enough for the Barsett name?”

“You cannot have mentioned this to her,” Tony decided.

“ 'Course I did not! Had to see you first, didn't I?”

“I do not think—”

“Then hear me out,” Cole interrupted again. “I've got forty thousand that says she's as fine as any lady. And that's but the settlements, Lyndon. Leah stands to inherit more than thrice that and more again when I'm gone.”

“Forty thou …” Tony opened his mouth and closed it abruptly as his brain assimilated the enormity of the offer.

“Thought that might bring you around.” The old man nodded smugly.

“I doubt your daughter would welcome my suit,” Tony admitted in bald understatement.

“D'ye think I made my fortune with a pea brain? 'Course she ain't going to like it! But she'll come around—bound to when she gets a better eyeful. You look like one of them damned Greek heads Elgin brought back—the ones he wants to tax us for—for one thing, and I hear you are well-versed in the petticoat line, which ought to help,” he digressed briefly. “Bound to know how to please my girl, Lyndon—bound to!”

He lowered his voice and leaned closer. “But I won't have you trifling with her affections, you understand? She ain't ever to hear of any other lights-o'-love—a woman don't take kindly to that sort of thing. Be discreet, Lyndon—be discreet—'tis all I ask.”

“Mr. Cole, I am trying to tell you that she has taken me in dislike,” Tony interrupted patiently.

“Aye, she did mention as how you was overbold with her when you met,” Jeptha Cole allowed. “But females get queer notions, don't you know it? A little address, a few compliments—she'll come to see it our way—you can take Jeptha Cole's word for it.”

Tony thought of Leah Cole as last he'd seen her and knew she would refuse such a match out of hand. Besides, his pockets were far from let, rumors notwithstanding, and he was not certain any fortune was worth the end of his salad days. Offering to set Leah Cole up as his mistress was one thing, marrying her quite another. There was no way to wrap it up in clean linen—the girl, however beautiful, was still a Cit. And if his great-aunt complained of trade, he could well imagine her reaction to the lovely Leah.

When Tony didn't answer, Jeptha Cole wondered if he'd mistaken his man. The Quality was queer in some respects—sometimes it seemed they'd rather go to Newgate than rub elbows with the merchant class. “Tell you what, my lord—come dine with us tonight,” he coaxed. “You don't have to give me an answer until then. And once you see my Leah at her best, I think you'll be pleased to take her.”

“You do not give a man much time,” Tony muttered.

“I may not have much time, my lord.” Cole touched his chest apologetically. “D'ye think I'd go about it like this if I did? Damned Frenchie doctor says the heart's bad—got to rest more, he says,” he snorted. “Well, I cannot. But I mean to see my girl settled, and I'd like to see a grandson ere I go—gives a man pride to know his blood goes on.”

Tony could almost see the look on her face when her father presented him as a prospective husband, and decided that alone would be worth the dinner. And he had to admit that the mere thought of her was enough to send his pulses racing.

“I am promised to dine with friends at White's,” he began slowly, and as the older man's face fell, he relented. “All right, I'll come, but I don't …”

Pleased with the apparent success of his mission, Jeptha Cole smiled broadly. “Just wait until I tell my Leah—a viscountess!” Then, catching sight of Tony's frown, he remembered himself and sobered. “Well, that's not to say you'll take her, of course,” he added hastily. “But I'm a fool if you can look at her and not think her worthy of a title, my lord.”

“L
yndon?”
Leah screeched indignantly at the mention of his name. “The man's a dashed loose screw! No, I could not even be civil to him—no.”

“Aye, you will. I asked him to dine with us tonight, and he has accepted,” her father told her smugly.

“Tonight
? Papa, how
could
you?” Jutting her chin mulishly, she met her father's eyes defiantly. “I shall keep to my room then,” she declared. “I refuse to sit at the same table with him.”

“Now, now, there's naught to dislike in the fellow, I assure you. I daresay 'tis all a mistake on your part, my dear, for—”

“A mistake on
my
part? Papa, you have no notion how ‘twas!” Her voice rose dangerously and her gray eyes flashed angrily. “You were not there!”

“Well, you were overset by the curricle, no doubt,” he said soothingly.

“It was no such thing!” she sputtered. “And … and even if I was, that does not account for his odious behavior today. The man had the … the
effrontery
to insinuate that I was some sort of lightskirt! He offered me
carte blanche
—said he'd be generous to me—to
me,
to your daughter, Papa! And it wasn't even as if he knew me! Are you so lost to propriety that you would expect me to entertain the lecher here?”

“Now I know you are mistaken,” he pointed out mildly. “Can't have offered you a slip of die shoulder even—he's got no money,
Leah. Very good sort of a fellow, actually, the way I see him.”

“Very good sort … the way … Papa, you are quite certain we are speaking of the same gen … the same
man?
”
she choked.

“Ain't but one of 'em.” He was positive. “Devilish handsome fellow—too pretty by half, actually, looks like that Greek … what's his name?”

“You are thinking of Alexander the Great most probably,” she answered dampeningly. “And even if he does, that cannot compensate for his total lack of manners!”

“Now, now, puss …” He attempted to mollify her. “If he acted queer in the attic, which I don't admit he would, then it must've been over his losses—fellow lost everything when his ship sank a couple of weeks back, like I told you. You ought to pardon anything under the circumstances—I mean, stands to reason he ain't thinking clearly just now.”

For once in her life, Leah was bereft of speech. Unable to believe her father would dismiss Viscount Lyndon's insult to her so lightly, she paced the floor to cool her temper.

“ 'Tis all over London, Leah—fellow ain't got a feather left to fly with,” he continued in the same vein. “Heard where he's taken to the gaming hells to bring himself about—”

“And you would have me be civil to a … a hardened gamester, Papa? Are you so taken with this … this
unprincipled
rakehell's title that you will forgive him anything?” she demanded.

“Leah … Leah …” He extended his hands again to placate her. “I would see he does right by my girl, and well you know it.”

“I will not dine with him.”

“Have to—that is, he is expecting to see you, my dear,” he informed her patiently. “Went to see his lordship just this afternoon—told 'im I'd bring 'im about, pay his debts and settle on him handsomely.”

As his meaning sank in, she stopped pacing and spun around. “You
what?”
she demanded awfully.

He hadn't meant to give her his news quite so abruptly, and he could have bitten his tongue for saying it, but there was no help for it now, he supposed. Nodding, he plunged into his scheme. “He'll make you a lady, Leah.

You ought to have been born one, you know—ten times prettier than them that are—and it's my fondest wish to see you fixed in society ere I am gone. Thought to be choosy,” he went on as the wrath in her eyes increased, “but there ain't too many lords as wants to mix with Jeptha Cole, and my time's passing, Leah. Now, Lyndon's fine-looking—got a good, aristocratic bloodline too—and he can't be too nice in his tastes if he is to come about by marriage.”

“You offered Lord Lyndon money to marry me?” The color drained from her face momentarily as she faced him, and her voice dropped to a husky whisper. “Papa, how
could
you?” And then it rose again to a near-shout, and the flush returned to her cheeks. “Of all the humiliating circumstances …Well, I won't do it! D'you hear me?”

“Leah …Leah …”

“No! Not only will I not consider him eligible, I will not even come down to see him,” she declared flatly.

“Aye, you will—my heart is set on the match.”

“Papa, are you
daft
? I tell you the man has insulted me beyond bearing, and you tell me you have offered him money to marry me!”

“Make you a viscountess, my dear,” he maintained stubbornly.

“And I do not care if he could make me a royal duchess! I'd sooner wed Prinny himself than Lord Lyndon—do you hear me?”

“Aye, I hear you—and so does everyone else in this house.” His own patience at an end, he advanced on her. “Now, let me tell you something, missy—I have not paid for all these fancy lessons to see you wasted on a nobody!”

“Perhaps I should prefer a nobody,” she sniffed.

It was an idle threat and Jeptha Cole knew it—he'd not guarded his daughter carefully, refusing to send her away to school even, for nothing. “You don't know one! You listen to your papa, missy—I promised your dying mother you'd have what was due you, and so you shall! I have let you indulge yourself in those silly novels and all manner of foolishness, and now 'tis time to pay up. I have turned away offers every day from men who have not even seen you—rich men, too—while I waited for a titled lord. Well, the time is now! I have found the one I want.”

“But I don't want, him! Please, Papa—”

“You ain't no simpering miss, Leah! You are nigh to twenty and 'tis time you wed. You will be pleased to be all that is civil to Lord Lyndon!”

“Papa, I have taken him in active dislike. Surely—”

“Would you rather have Rosswell? He's nigh to fifty, if he's a day, but he'd take you in a trice. Which is it, missy—countess to an old earl, or viscountess to a young viscount?”

“Neither!”

“Leah …”He spoke in a calmer voice, but the veins stood out ominously on his shining head. “I did not make my fortune by being soft. Do not make me treat you as I would any other. Indulge me in this—use Lyndon to your advantage, Leah. Wed him and live your life as a lady,” he coaxed.

“Lord Lyndon is a rake and a gamester, Papa—and an odious person in the bargain. I do not care how pure his blood is—the man himself is beneath contempt.”

“Then change him!” he snapped, abandoning his brief effort at reasoning. “Bring him to heel with my money, if you will, and make what you want of him! I tell you my mind is set on him!”

She knew it was useless to argue with her father when he used that tone to her, and further words would only make him more adamant. No, the only way to circumvent his ridiculous plan would be to discourage Lyndon himself, and if his lordship were indeed in such straitened circumstances, that task could prove difficult.

“What time is he to arrive?” she asked finally.

“Now, that's the girl I like to see, Leah.” His voice softened perceptibly, and the harsh lines on his face relaxed at her apparent capitulation. “He comes at eight, and I have already instructed that Frenchie cook to provide an elegant repast, you can be sure—‘Make something unpronounceable for his lordship,' I told 'im, ‘and don't be stintin' on the expense.' Damned fellow would have it that he could not do so on late notice, but I gave him the right of it,” he grumbled. “It ain't a wonder that they lost the war if they cannot run a tighter establishment than that—'tis the French character, that's what it is!” His voice dripped with disgust until he remembered the main point of Lyndon's visit. “Yes … well, that ain't got nothing to do with you, my dear. You run along and put on some of that finery I've ransomed. And do not forget to have your dresser pinch those cheeks for you—'tis too pale by half you are, and I'd not have Lyndon think you unhealthy.”

“Yes, Papa,” she murmured with feigned docility.

Her whole body seething at the thought of meeting Lord Lyndon again, she sought her chamber and plotted her strategy. So Lyndon thought to look her over like a horse at Tattersall's before he bought? Well, she'd give him something to look at, all right. She did not have much time, to be sure, but she intended to make an impression he would not forget.

Calling for her dresser the moment she crossed the threshold, she ordered, “Find the paste and rouge pots, Jeanne—I think Annie had some when she threw her hat over the windmill for Mr. Thirkell's second footman— and rip the lace from the bodice of my blue dress, if you please.”

“The lace? But, mademoiselle, 'twill be indecent!”

“Let us hope so,” Leah muttered under her breath. “If Lord Lyndon would see a lady, I mean to show him a harpy—'tis what he thinks I am anyway.” Aware of the little dresser's shocked expression, she added forcefully, “And I would have all the tall plumes you can discover.”