“I’ll try not to offend, Captain, but…a frolicking milksop. Tied to his mother’s apron strings. Fella has less ballocks than yer gelding.”
Miles chuckled whilst knocking the rook over with a knuckle – for his indispensable factotum spoke the truth – and located the knight.
“But his younger brother,” muttered Lynch into his whisky, “is an altogether different kettle of fish.”
“My cousin Alasdair?”
“Aye. Gamester, libertine, sly boots, ne’er-do-well and…er…cheat.”
“Allegedcheat, Lynch.” Because Alasdair’s good fortune at the card table was indeed infamous and he’d heard the occasional whisper in London that it could not all be through legitimate endeavour.
Some years back, for reasons unknown, Alasdair’s father had utterly cast his youngest son off, so he’d fled to the Continent. But after Alasdair’s father had died, a different man had returned from the young cousin Miles had known – sardonic and detached. One who amassed money and then spent it like a sailor on leave.
But there was one problem with Lynch’s suggestion.
Miles could not help but like him. “No. Not Alasdair.”
“Shared blood don’t mean they won’t slit yer throat fer all this.” Lynch glanced around, waggling his glass at the opulent study.
“No, indeed.” He slugged a good measure. “But I know Dair.” And the knight was toppled.
“It’s yer own grave,” Lynch mumbled, before a grin cut his dark features. “Well, since yer ain’t leg-shackled… Any miffed ladybirds?”
Miles slipped his finger to the queen. “Not that I can think of. And certainly not in London. On the Continent, we were never in one place long enough for anything more than a brief liaison, and since I’ve returned to this earldom, it’s been all-consuming.”
“Sounds to me like yer need to blow off some loose corn then, Captain. And you’ll have ter bag a countess soon enough too, now you’re a rum swell.”
Miles merely grunted, for a countess was indeed on his list of matters to bag…er, resolve whilst in London – Number Five, in fact, just below plans for his botanic endeavours and, after tonight, ascertaining if there was more to this run of ill-fortune.
“After that bayonet wound,” continued Lynch, leaning back, “yer were a mite feverish and mumbled about some wench from yer salad days.”
Miles lifted his eyes to the bookshelf opposite, then higher, settling upon the leather-spined 1677 edition ofFlorae Altdorffinae Deliciae Hortenses sive Catalogus Plantarum Horti Medicitucked away on the top shelf, despite its value. He took a long breath. “That was seven years ago now.”
Lynch snorted. “Calf love.”
But memories of her drifted in like autumn leaves caught on a chill breeze. “She was young, we both were. Spirited and just seventeen, with eye colour akin to the fruit of theAesculus hippocastanum.”
“Eh?”
“Conker tree.” Miles inhaled the whisky, his mind’s eye gripped in the past. “Her lips were of a spring rose but with hair too deep a black for nature to replicate, and a sprig of honeysuckle was pinned to her cotton bodi–”
“Smite me deaf, C’tain, no more…”
A sprig of honeysuckle that he’d gifted her.
And how he had ached for her.
Miss Verity Seymour.
She’d never wholly faded from his thoughts. No matter how much he wished she would.
Miles shook his head.
It had been a mere short summer of clandestine young love – nothing more. An epoch of youthful dreams that had been shattered by her treacherous heart.
“It matters not, Lynch. The fickle miss married another, some coxcomb named Locksley, so it’s all long past.”
“If yer say so.”
