“You are the only man among us who can frighten people without trying,” said Cromwell.
“Show her the Reaper of Iredell, and she’ll sign the retraction before you draw your next breath. No effort at all.” Wiltshire’s mouth stretched into something that bore only a passing resemblance to a smile.
Henry held his gaze without blinking. The man had opposed his membership from the start when he had represented his father during his illness. The late Duke of Iredell had been a founding member, and the Alliance could not remove him without violating their own charter.
“I may be ill-tempered, gentlemen, but I will not stoop so low as to intimidate a woman.”
“Like it or not, it is necessary.” Banbury’s voice had lost its scholarly mildness. “Your particular talents are required. The lady must be made to understand the gravity of her situation.”
Particular talents.Henry’s hands curled into fists at his side. They spoke of his reputation as though it were a service he provided.
“The only reason you are still accepted by half theton, Iredell, is because we have not voiced our objection to your unfortunate run of wives. It is time that you repay us.” Cromwell picked something off his trousers and flicked it away.
There it was. The collar he had almost forgotten, drawn snug against his throat. Without their overt approval, he would be apariah. They knew it. He knew it. And every year, the cost of their tolerance grew steeper.
“She lives in Hampstead.” Cranbrook read off a small piece of paper. “Go at the first light tomorrow. We have not the time to delay. The lady must understand that her cooperation is not a request.”
Henry did not answer. He set his glass down on the nearest table, offered the room a bow so shallow it bordered on insult, and walked out of Cranbrook House without looking back.
Chapter two
Miss Linton’s Terms
Henry
The road to Hampstead at first light was a road that had given up. The rain that had come down on Mayfair through the night was coming down on Hampstead still, harder now, with a wind behind it. Henry’s coachman had served the family since Henry was a boy of twelve, and in all those years had never been known for a sour temper. This morning his silence said what his manners would not.
Henry sat with his hat on his knee and clenched his teeth.
Frank Trowbridge, barely twenty and drunk on his newly inherited title, was proving to be a thorn in his side. He’d have to intervene again, he was certain, judging by the boy’s lack of sense. If the boy had not been the grandson of a founding member, Henry would have suggested they leave him in whatever snare he had set for himself.
But alas, Henry had to act as a pet Reaper once more.
The squares had given way to streets, the streets to lanes, and the lanes in time, to a wall of hedge work so unkempt that thecoachman drove past the gate three times before Henry himself caught the brass plate on the stone post: THORNWICK. The plate was green with age. The gate stood ajar on tired hinges. There were no lamps. The drive was unraked. It ran between trees that had grown into one another at their crowns, so that the rain came through the canopy in heavier, irregular drops where it came through at all.
The house was smaller than he had supposed any house called a manor would be. Two storeys of brick that had been red once. A single window on the upper floor showed lamplight. The remainder was dark, and the dark made the warmth of the one lit room more visible.
He climbed down. He told the coachman to take the carriage round to whatever passed for stables and to wait. The man touched his hat and turned the horses.
Henry mounted three shallow steps to a door whose paint was peeling in long curls. He used the brass knocker. It made a sound less authoritative than his knuckles would have done.
The door opened.
The man who opened it was not a butler. Henry knew this at once. He was perhaps four and twenty. He wore his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow and a jacket of a sort that Henry’s own grooms would not have worn out of the mews. His hands were calloused, with fresh cuts from the day’s work.
He looked at Henry’s coat, then at his hat, then at his face.
“Yes.” His spine remained straight.
“I have come to call upon Miss Linton.” Henry presented his card.
The man took it. He studied, without any visible hurry, the closed carriage at the foot of the drive with the Iredell crest on it.
“Wait here.” He shut the door.
The bolt shot home. Henry stood on the step with the rain finding its way under his collar, and after a moment, laughed—once, faintly. It had been months since anything had surprised him enough for that.
For a quarter of a minute, he was working out what had just happened. He had not been left on the wrong side of a closed door since boyhood, and not, in any case, against his will. He could not remember the last servant who had failed to bow to him at all.