Page 20 of The Fortune Hunter’s Gamble

“But you seemed so eager the first time around. Barely out of the schoolroom. Your debut ball was where your engagement was announced.”

Her face grew taut, her eyes smoldering. “You were not there.”

Because he knew in advance what was coming, informed by a gleeful Aunt Edmons, who for all her kindnesses to him had never once guessed where Rowden’s heart lay.

“I presume you will wish the next one to ride,” Rowden said. “And buy you a fine house in London?”

“I like the country.” She nudged her horse to a brisker trot, trying to pull away from him. “I would like to see more of it. I should like to travel abroad. Henry never wanted to.” She drew in a sharp breath on the last words, as if she’d said more than she wished.

She must have idolized Hinton, worshipped him, to have given over so much of what she loved. She did not exhibit signs that her heart was in the grave, but as he had reason to know, she was an excellent liar.

“Need he be a banker? Or must he simply be rich?”

She flared her eyes at him. “We ought to be discussing the attributes Giles wishes in a wife. Since we both wish him a happy union.”

“Oh, indeed.” Rowden increased their pace, the gelding moving powerfully beneath him but disgruntled to be held at bay. “Giles’s wife will find it a simple matter to attend his needs and wishes. Bring him now and again a tray of food he won’t eat, and supply him with laudanum and his opium pipe.”

Another swift intake of breath. It grated, how easily he could still read her gestures and expressions. As if, underneath the fuller lines and airs of woman and wifehood, she were still the same old Sophronia at her core.

The one person in the world who had been able to keep up with him, to calm him, to understand his thoughts when he could not find the words. The person who had always been there, like the rock below the riverbed.

The one person in the world who had always been his, until that one shattering moment when she was his no longer.

“Opium,” she murmured. “Was that what I smelled on him?”

“Afraid so. He depends on it too much. And if I deny him at the club, he simply goes elsewhere. At least at the Albion I can limit how much he takes in. Or try to.”

“He has no power to limit himself?”

“Not any longer. His physician has always prescribed laudanum for his digestive pains, but now he uses it for everything. Restless sleep. Disorders of the nerves. Whenever my uncle lectures him on making something of himself and he becomes unhappy.”

“Yes,” Sophronia murmured, “I can see how one would turn to opiates in order to live with Lord Denford.”

Rowden decided not to tell her how often he had entertained the same thought, blaming his uncle for Giles’s weaknesses. No one ever held Giles accountable for himself.

“Do you think if he had his own household, and other interests, he might spend less time at the club?”

“That is my hope. And that is why I selected Mary Kemp.”

“Why her?”

She kept pace with him, showing no signs of discomfort or fatigue, and he struck out from the pool along the trail leading toward the Mall. The spires of St. James Palace jutted into the sky behind the neo-Palladian outlines of the old Queen’s Library, where Queen Caroline, wife of George II, had looked for refuge from the strains of palace life.

“Miss Kemp’s mother is the daughter of an earl and her father is a grandson of a duke. She has an impressive bloodline and impeccable manners.”

“No doubt. But does she have the spine to stand up to your uncle?”

“I should think the only requirement is that Giles likes her.”

She gave a most unladylike snort. That sound, too, hit a familiar note in his ear, a disdainful noise from Sophronia when he’d said something she deemed foolish. “That proves how little acquainted you are with the institution of marriage.”

“One marriage does not make you an expert on the institution,” he snapped. Old, childhood Sophronia might have been allowed to lord it over him. Mature Mrs. Hinton, betrayer of trust, was not allowed to heap scorn upon his head.

“And yet the principles of domestic concordance run in an ancient pattern,” she murmured. “The man decrees, and the woman bends.”

“That will make a tyrant of the man,” Rowden observed.

“Yes, it very often does.”