Page 22 of A Lady of Conscience

James flashed his father a bitter glance over his shoulder. “She refused me.”

Lord Allendale’s brows lifted. This was plainly a turn of events he hadn’t anticipated. “Did she?” he murmured to himself.

“In no uncertain terms.” Turning, James leaned back against the bookshelves, folding his arms. The library stretched out before him, with its dark wood paneling, overstuffed chairs, and heavy red draperies. It smelled faintly of pipe tobacco.

His father regarded him from across the distance. “That explains why you look as though you’d swallowed poison,” he said. “Sent you away with a flea in your ear, did she?”

James’s jaw tightened reflexively. His relationship with his father had always been a good one. They rarely quarreled (except over what James had sometimes perceived as too much leniency afforded to his wild younger siblings). They also rarely talked with any degree of intimacy.

From childhood, James had been accustomed to keeping his troubles to himself. He’d never wanted to add to his parents’ burdens. Today was no different.

Except that his usually glacial control was at its lowest ebb. He’d been humbled. Robbed of his defenses.

“On the contrary,” he said in the same bitter tone. “She told me that she likes me very much.”

“Ah.” The earl strolled to join him by the bookshelves. “But not enough, I discern.”

James shrugged. “She prefers to marry a man who will accept her as she is.”

His father shot him an unfathomable look. “Did you imply that you wouldn’t?”

A dull heat crept up James’s throat. It wasn’t embarrassment. It was annoyance. And not at his father or Hannah. James was annoyed with himself. “I might have done,” he said. “Inadvertently.”

“It isn’t like you to do anything inadvertently.”

James made no reply. What could he say? That he’d made a thorough hash of it? That much must be evident already.

His father reached past him to withdraw a large book from the shelf. He tested the weight of it in his hand. “A history of Great Britain through the reign of James II,” he said. “The last in a series of books my grandfather made me read when I was a lad, traveling with him in Italy. I never did finish it.”

James’s father had spent his formative years on the continent, being schooled by James’s great-grandfather, the late Earl of Allendale. Travel, books, and a succession of eccentric private tutors had stood in lieu of Oxford or Cambridge. By the time James’s father had returned to England, he’d been able to pass for a gentleman.

But only just.

There were few in fashionable society who had forgotten the ignominious circumstances of his birth. He’d begun life working in the stables at Beasley Park, the bastard offspring of a degenerate scullery maid and a legendary gentleman-turned-highwayman. It was only later that his legitimacy had been proven and he’d taken his rightful place as the heir to the earldom.

The rumors had nevertheless persisted.

James had been flayed by those rumors since he was a lad. He’d dealt with them daily when he was away at school, first spouted by boys and later by young men, like Fennick and the rest of his ilk. Men who wielded their flawless pedigrees like weapons against anyone they deemed a threat. Even now, when visiting London, there was always some loudmouth at James’s club who—after dipping too deep—would spout off about the former stableboy who had become an earl.

It was the primary motive for James to marry well. The only remedy for the stain on the Beresfords’ history was to link their family with another great house. One whose behavior, wealth, and pedigree were so unfailingly pristine that it would outweigh any hint of former scandal attached to the Beresford name.

That had been the plan, anyway, until he’d crossed paths with Hannah Heywood.

“I was determined that you and your brothers would do better than I did,” the earl said. “Not a ramshackle upbringing, but a traditional one, befitting your station. Eton. Oxford. Respectable marriages into established, aristocratic families.” He gave James a thoughtful frown. “As the eldest, I daresay you shouldered the bulk of that dream. It can’t have been easy given the Beresford reputation.”

“I haven’t complained,” James said.

“All the same…” The earl’s frown deepened. “I believe I’ve asked too much of you.”

James went rigid. Was his father implying that he hadn’t been up to the challenge? That he’d failed in some way? “No more than is my duty,” he said stiffly.

“Duty isn’t the whole of a man’s life. The very fact that you proposed to Miss Heywood tells me that you⁠—”

“Miss Heywood has saved me from a great piece of folly,” James said. “I was wrong to propose to her, especially now that Kate and Ivo have fallen short of the mark.”

They had been expected to marry well too. Instead, Kate had betrothed herself to an ex-naval lieutenant and Ivo was engaged to the unpolished daughter of their family’s oldest enemy, a vile country baronet. Both were a far cry from the aristocratic matches that had long been envisioned for them.

“You’d hoped to wed a lady of consequence,” his father said. “We all know that.” He tucked the book under his arm. “But the heart wants what it wants.”