Page 29 of The Fortune Hunter’s Gamble

“She—” Rowden didn’t need to ask for identification. Gibbs’s gaze followed Sophronia as keenly as did his own. “Which print?”

“The one of you paying a squire for access to his daughter, while Fanny Glass and Miss Kemp vie for your attention.” Gibbs smirked. “Fine likeness of Mrs. Glass, I must say.”

Rowden gnashed his teeth. He felt like tossing about the rocks arranged to enhance the setting. “That gossip did not take long to appear.”

“Gossip never does.” Gibbs watched him curiously. “What is she to you?”

“Soph—Mrs. Hinton?” Rowden rubbed a hand over his chest, faintly surprised not to find a spear protruding from his anatomy. Sophronia tipped her head to listen to something Miss Kemp murmured, then she chuckled. It was her polite chuckle, amusement disguised as encouragement to make the person she was with feel splendid.

Hades take her for charming Miss Kemp. The girl would fall under her spell, as did everyone, and agree to whatever Sophronia bid her do, including abandon her bid for Giles’s attention. Not that she had any opportunity to engage Giles at the moment, and he stood lecturing Miss Westall on the construction of the Brighthelmstone sea wall, while that maiden stood seemingly entranced by talk of concrete and scaffolding.

“Our families have long been friends and neighbors back in Hungerford,” Rowden managed to say.

That was not precisely true, for it was Rowden and Sophronia’s friendship that had knit the families. The Denford title put the Rowdens among the first families in the neighborhood, in possession of an old royal deer park that Queen Elizabeth had awarded to the loyal ranger who had tended the property after she had executed the earlier favorite to whom the estate had been given. Rowden’s grandfather and his eldest son, the current Baron, had looked down on Edward Edmons, a glassmaker who, enjoying the fortune his father had made in lead crystal, married the daughter of the respectable Feltham family, used his fortune to restore the estate she was granted at marriage, and set himself up as a country gentleman.

Lady Denford, Rowden’s aunt, could and did cut Tabitha Edmons at every opportunity, despite her connection to the Felthams. Her ladyship did not enjoy her contempt for long, however, for Sophronia’s mother had been carried off by illness, along with Sophronia’s younger brother, when the boy was only four.

Rowden had lost his parents soon after, and when he saw the half-orphaned Edmons girl running across the downs as if she were trying to fling herself into oblivion, he had, with a sense of fellow feeling, stepped in to keep her from drowning in the Kennet or being trampled by the draught horses or sheep.

The friendship had sustained them both through the turmoil of their childhoods. Lady Denford succumbed to illness of her own not long after her rival had laid down her arms, and Rowden had lived as a shadow in the Baron’s house, taken in on sufferance after his parents died, subordinate in all things to Giles, who was younger, docile, and fragile. Sophronia had been the sole prop of her father, who increasingly lost himself in his personal concerns, cataloguing and incessantly revising other catalogues of Georgian glass produced by his own former glassworks and others. With no one to look after them but their respective aunts, who were often too distracted by the demands of the household to fret much over healthy children who could amuse themselves, the two had run absolutely wild over the Hungerford Downs, as feral as fox kits.

Sophronia had always stood up for Rowden when the vicar chided him for being too boisterous and tried to make him meek like Giles. Rowden had devised outings to deliver Soph from being imprisoned in the parlor at her embroidery. He had fished her more than once out of the River Dun when she fell in while they were collecting watercress, and Sophronia regularly forged letters to Rowden’s schoolmaster at St. Bartholomew’s claiming that the Baron required him at home.

Sophronia and Rowden had always won the competition to see who would collect the most pennies for the parish church during the Hocktide celebrations. As a reward, they were the ones chosen to accompany the Tutti men as they made their rounds collecting the ancient rents from the commoners. They distributed oranges to honor Hungerford’s tradition as being the place where the Glorious Revolution had passed the crown from James II to William of Orange at the Bear Inn, and if at the end of the day a few oranges turned up in places they shouldn’t, the festivities could be blamed for inducing high spirits.

Rowden had always been Sophronia’s protector. And she had always been his.

“Let me guess. She bought up the prints so my reputation would not be besmirched. Or the Baron could not be angered by my appearing, again, in the satiric papers.”

Gibbs shrugged. “Whatever the reason, she laid down the gelt, and now she owns the engraving.”

“It won’t stop the printing. There will be a new one about me tomorrow, even if I’ve done nothing of interest.”

“You’ve done something of interest,” Gibbs drawled. “What will Miss Kemp think of the competition for your hand?”

“Miss Kemp?” Rowden blinked at the other man, then let his eyes drift back to where Sophronia stood with the younger girl, explaining something about depth and perspective in painting. “I intend Miss Kemp for Giles.”

Gibbs laughed at this. “You’ll have a task, tearing him away from the comely little brunette.”

“Yes,” Rowden said acidly, “I realize that.”

Sophronia had outgunned him once again. And yet, he could not manage to hold his resentment, not when she stood beaming with pleasure as she observed the happy groups around her. Aunt Dobbs and Miss Kemp’s chaperone tittered together at the viewing rail, ignoring both the panorama and their charges as they struck up an instant friendship in that way of women in similar circumstances. Lily sparkled and Giles glowed as they leaned side by side on the railing, elbows a hair’s breadth apart.

Gibbs abandoned Rowden to approach Sophronia, and she introduced him to Miss Kemp, somehow managing to pair off the two of them as Miss Kemp, after Gibbs smiled and bowed to her, could not manage to look anywhere else.

That left Sophronia standing alone, and Keeling set her in his sights at once.

Rowden clenched his teeth, watching the afternoon run away from him like spooked horses pulling a coach. He could not allow Sophronia to fall into the clutches of a rake like Keeling. It was not protectiveness, no, none of that; he was done protecting Sophronia. He simply did not want to witness a known rake and fortune hunter dangling after a vulnerable widow and rich wife. He would send Keeling off with a flea in his ear if he must.

“Hallo, Rowden. You seem none the worse for wear for losing a few thousand pounds at the gaming tables the other night.”

Rowden drew up short and turned toward the new voice. “Foster? Why the devil is everyone I know at the Panorama on this precise afternoon?”

Foster removed his wide-brimmed hat and dangled it from his hand. His gaze skimmed the others in the room, lingering on Sophronia. “Swung by the house and your man said where to find you. Thought any further about our discussion of late?”

Rowden steered him toward the rail of the circular platform, away from the other groups. “I have not been practicing my Russian, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Suppose you’ve read in the papers, like everyone else, the reports that Emperor Paul is building up the Russian military. Everyone is speculating another Coalition might arise.”