Page 21 of The Fortune Hunter’s Gamble

Mary Kemp would be easily tyrannized. She was a slight, quiet wisp of a girl, wide of eye and sweet of voice, and she jumped when a driver hallooed in the street.

But Giles was the most easy-tempered and manageable of men, so long as he was not in pain from one of his various ailments. He required a sweet, quiet woman.

“Why did you select Lily—Miss Westall?” Rowden tried to recall the girl, but if he had met her, she’d made no impression. Granted, his time in Hungerford, then and now, was concerned with wondering where Sophronia was and what she was doing. Damn her for having such a hold of his mind, even now.

“Aunt Dobbs made the suggestion, and the Baron concurs. I am only here to facilitate. She has not the bloodline of a Miss Kemp, but she has good sense and great kindness, and I think she might be the one best equipped to ease Giles’s way back to health.”

“He has always been sickly,” Rowden said.

“Delicate,” she answered. “Which is one reason your uncle so resents you, is it not? Because his own heir is always suffering, while you are hale and hearty. He thinks it an insult to him.”

Rowden froze. He felt as if she’d sunk a rake into his heart and dragged the tines across his chest, ripping up flesh and old, old hurts. He’d never put in quite that language the reasons for his uncle’s antipathy to him.

He’d always simply assumed it was because he was, in essence, unlikeable. His parents had abandoned him, and though their deaths abroad were not their choice, leaving him behind had been their doing. His uncle had taken on the care of his nephew but had never truly accepted him. And when Sophronia married another, it confirmed what Rowden had always feared: there was something about him that others simply could not love.

To think it might be something in his uncle that made him unkind to Rowden upturned everything he believed about himself and his own worth.

“I am not the subject of discussion,” Rowden croaked. Ye Gods, how was he to bear the scrutiny if Sophronia started examining him? She’d see through all his pretenses in a flash.

“But you will be, once Lily and Giles announce their nuptials and I arrange for your bride.” She laughed at the look on his face. “Do you fear my taste so much? I will find you the perfect woman, Rowden.” She wheeled her horse at the corner where the brick wall divided Green Park from St. James’s. “Race you down the Queen’s Walk?”

“You do not know that mount,” he said, his tone sharp. This was the old Sophronia, being reckless. He did not want to see that girl emerging beneath this harder, weary shell she’d acquired. He could not bear to think his friend was still in there and had been lost to him all this time.

She patted the neck of the jennet, who tossed her head with a flourish. “My sweet Dulcinea and I think as one. You only fear we will win.”

“My horse’s legs are twice as long.”

“Brute strength will not win you every contest, Rowden. Yah!” She crouched low over the jennet’s neck as the horse sprang into motion in a ripple of dappled gray. The mare stretched into a lively canter, then a full gallop. Rowden lashed Hercules into pursuit. The gelding surged into a full run, baring his teeth with joy.

Sophronia whooped and clapped a hand on her bonnet. Her skirts billowed with air. Hercules nosed forward, but Rowden held the gelding’s shoulders behind Dulcinea’s flanks, enjoying the view. Soph rode with grace and control, body balanced and poised. Laughter spilled from her, delighted and carefree, and a fierce joy surged in Rowden’s chest. He’d feared he would never hear that laugh again.

She pulled up beneath a scarlet oak, her face shining. That abandon was another punch to the chest, leaving him winded. Her eyes glittered, pink flushed her cheeks, and her lips parted, petal soft. She looked as if she’d been thoroughly kissed and was ready to be kissed again.

“You let me win,” she accused him.

He fisted his hands on the reins so he would not be so foolish as to reach for her. “I won’t be the reason you break your neck.”

She tossed her head in the same spirited flourish he’d seen from Dulcinea. “I’ve never run on softer ground, and we were barely moving.”

“Rowden, you devil. Don’t think I’ve ever seen you upright at this hour.”

Sophronia glanced behind him and straightened in the saddle, twitching her skirts to cover her trim black boots. The hoyden fell away and in an instant she was the decorous widow, composed, serene. Only the flush remained in her cheek and the blue glint in her eye, to betray the flash of spirit.

Rowden turned to confront the man, a gentleman who frequented the Albion. He liked to brag of his knowledge of horses and the courtesans he’d won from their keepers. Rowden had saved him once from gambling away a family heirloom, a necklace of sapphires the size of guineas that belonged to his mother and the loss of which would have landed the man in the Marshalsea, if not worse.

“Hullo, Keeling. Only suppose you never see me because you’re still abed at this hour.”

Keeling chuckled. “But not this morn, to my good fortune. Present me to your lady friend.”

Rowden bared his teeth. “Since when do you have a care for the courtesies?”

Sophronia raised her brows in mild rebuke. He was being intolerably rude.

“When I find you outside of your usual haunts, escorting intriguing women.” Keeling gave her a roguish smile. “Must I do the honors myself?”

Rowden tried not to snarl. “Soph, this is Mr. James Keeling, and I hope you will not have reason to regret the acquaintance. Keeling, this is Mrs. Henry Hinton.”

“James of the Chatham Keelings, shipbuilders,” his friend hastened to say. “You might have heard of m’father’s company. Would that be Hinton of Hinton’s Bank?”