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A moment later, the butler returned, looking slightly more harried than he had when he left. “His lordship will see you.Followme.”
Marc followed the old servant down the corridor and up a flight of stairs. Kelling’s bedchamber was the second room to the right and the butler opened the doorforhim.
“Thank you, Poole,” the young baron called weakly from the middle of his four-poster, and it sounded like speaking was ratherpainful.
The man’s right eye was swollen shut, the majority of his face was varying shades of purple, and his torso seemed to be wrapped tight in a white dressingcloth.
Marc waited for the butler to take his leave before walking across the floor to stand over the bandaged man. “Aren’t you prettytoday?”
“Come to admire your handiwork?” Kelling glared out of the eye that wasn’t swollen shut. “What the hell doyouwant?”
“Honestly?” Marc shook his head and dropped into a chair across from the fellow’s bed. “Did you think you could throw a dagger at me and there’d be no piper to pay? Best to select your adversaries a little better next time,myboy.”
“Is that why you’re here?” The man winced in pain. “You’ve come to finish me off? I think I may have a few ribs you didn’tbreak.”
“Buck up, man,” Marc drawled, not feeling the least bit sorry for the bedridden fellow. “You’ve chosen the path you’re on. Consequences always go along with choices. Next time aim better, you won’t be the one recovering in asickbed.”
“What grand advice,” Kelling wheezed out. “I’ll remember that the next time you’re accostingsomegirl.”
“Accosting her?” That was hardly the case. But that girlwasthe very reason Marc was there. He might have secured Rachel’s begrudging acquiescence about hieing off to Covent Garden on her own, but if she was anything like her mother, and he suspected she was a great deal like her mother, Rachel had not abandoned her quest to learn the dagger-throwing guardian’s identity. And the consequences that lie down that particular path would not be good for her. “That’s the problem with playing judge, jury, and executioner. You rarely get more than oneperspective.”
“So shewantedto go with you? I missed that,didI?”
“I’d imagine, under that mask, you missalot.”
If Kelling could scowl, Marc thought he might do so. “If you’ve come to talk meoutof—”
Out of his life as the Covent Guard? Marc snorted. “Do I seem altruistic to you?” Then he shook his head. “I don’t care what you do with your time or what motivates you to don a mask and throw daggers at people in the dark of night. Butthatgirl last night...She’s anothermatter.”
“Seems a little youngforyou.”
“What she is to me is none of your bloody business. But you’ll stay away from her. If you see her coming in one direction, you’ll head the other. Am Iclear?”
“I don’t even know who she is,” Kellingmuttered.
And Marc meant to keep it that way. “She’s a girl who doesn’t need to get mixed up in whatever it is you’re involved with. So you see her, you turnaround.”
“So she’s safe, then?” the fellowasked.
Despite her best efforts otherwise. “Aye, and I intend to see that she stays that way.” Even if she wouldn’t thank him for his troubles. Then he heaved a sigh as he pushed back to his feet. “You’ve created quite the name for yourself, Kelling. I can’t see how any of this is going to end wellforyou.”
“I thought you didn’t care.” He seemed to suck in a rather painfulbreath.
“I don’t.” Marc shrugged. “Just an observation. Whether or not you get yourself gutted makes no differencetome.”
“Just so long as the girl isn’t mixed upinit?”
“Just so,” Marc agreed. And just as he started for the exit, Chase Winslett bounded intotheroom.
“Christian, you’ll never...” But whatever else the young fellow meant to say died on his lips as his gaze landed on Marc. “Haversham?”
Winslett didn’t seem at all surprised to find Kelling laid up and covered in bandages, and the butler hadn’t announced the young man’s arrival, all of which made Marc suspect that Winslett was involved in his friend’s Covent Garden activities. There was apparently not enough to do these days to keep young lordlings entertained. And if Winslett was involved with all this Covent Guard business, then Marc made a mental note to keep that particular idiot away from Rachel Benton as well. “I’ll leave you to your friend,” he said as he quittheroom.
* * *
Perfect.Sebastian spotted his cousin Phineas Granard, Viscount Carraway, at the far corner of White’s, and he smiled. It would be much easier to talk to Fin here than it would at Carraway House with Felicity hoveringnearby.
Sebastian handed his beaver hat to a footman and made his way across the room to drop into a seat across from hiscousin. “Fin.”
