“It’s just that kind of insolence and intolerance for the way things are done that holds you back,” the secretary retorted acidly. In his middle years now, Viscount Castlereagh had breathed the heady power of government for most of his adult life, and his impatience with this interview was plain. “For all your intellect, you could not even finish Oxford without waving the flag of your noble code of honor and getting yourself kicked out.”
“Without honor, we are not men,” Blake argued. “The dean gave the grade and the prize I deserved to his lover. If a dean cheats in choosing award winners, is he any more right than a student caught cheating on an exam? Are men of power allowed more leeway than others?”
In response to Blake’s righteous anger, the molting parrot perched in a cage in the corner woke with a start and cried,
“Égalité!”
Blake fisted his fingers to prevent flinging an inkpot at the bird. His frustration oftentimes got the better of him. With his future riding on this audience, he couldn’t afford to vent his annoyance here.
“Sometimes, yes,” Castlereagh said. “Men of power are in a position to know more than the common man. Had you obeyed your commanding officer in Portugal and not galloped down a hillside to save a damned enlisted soldier, you might not have taken a bullet to your leg, and you could have earned your colors and been working on your wretched code by now. Your behavior will not suit our office, Montague.”
“It cost me the price of a uniform, a horse, and transportation to volunteer as an officer, my lord. With all due respect, I cannot afford to volunteer again. I will have to enlist as cannon fodder in the front lines, with little chance of obtaining what I need.”
“If you do not want to be cannon fodder,” Castlereagh retorted impatiently, “then yes, I suggest you purchase an officer’s colors, join Wellesley, and learn to take orders, even if doing so means marrying for wealth. Or is that beneath your dignity also?”
“The future of England is at stake!” Blake retorted, ignoring the insult. “All I need is more examples of this code, and I’m certain I can break it. Wellesly can stop Napoleon in his tracks if he has the ability to read French messages. I’ll work at home if I’m such an irritation to your office.”
“And if we do not provide sufficient copies of the code, will you shoot us as you shot Carrington? Don’t think we don’t know about your duels. It was only because you provided discreet witnesses and were not caught that you were not prosecuted.”
“Lord Carrington is a cheat and a fraud and a plague upon society. He is fortunate I chose not to kill him,” Blake said maliciously, aware he’d lost the argument and would get no sympathy in this quarter. Carrington was a viscount, a lord of the realm. Blake was nothing but a thorn beneath his aristocratic instep.
Castlereagh’s scorn was apparent. Blake did not flinch as the great man gestured dismissal. Throwing back his shoulders, he offered a mocking salute, turned on his heel, and marched out. Or rather, limped out. The bullet from his brief stint in Portugal had torn ligaments in his left leg that had not yet healed. The bullet may have ended his volunteer status and sent him home with the wounded, but he did not regret having saved a man’s life.
Physical frustration was as much a part of his fury as his indignation at the obstacles thrown in his way by those in power. Until the wound knit properly, he’d been ordered to stay off horses and forgo fencing. Without physical release, he had no means of venting the ire boiling inside him.
Avoiding the laughing company in the parlor, Blake aimed for the study, where the brandy was kept. Entering, he encountered a languid, elegantly tailored figure already occupying a wingback chair, his boots propped upon the desk. Nicholas Atherton held out the decanter to his old friend.
“Irish boy turned you down, did he?” Nick asked, without much sympathy. “Probably for the best. You would have punched his snout the first day at a desk.”
“I am not a barbarian,” Blake said crossly, finding a glass and adding a goodly portion of the duke’s finest. “I’m quite capable of carrying out a civilized argument when all else is equal. Castlereagh made it plain that I am not his equal and, therefore, my opinion is of no importance.”
“Men in power have been known to be wrong,” Nick said idly, swinging his glass and admiring the portrait of the voluptuous late duchess hanging on the far wall.
“If I thought even for a moment that he would take the information I’ve given him about Jefferson’s wheel to someone in a position to work on this damned code, I’d let it go. But he won’t. Yet the fate of Wellesley’s army could depend on reading these ciphers.” Blake pulled a folded paper from his pocket and shook it open. It had come into his hands when he’d served briefly in Portugal. Deciphering puzzles was his expertise.
“You wouldn’t let it go,” Nick said with a laugh. “You never let anything go. You chew a problem to death until you decide whether to spit it out or swallow.”
“That’s a disgusting image.” The brandy didn’t mellow Blake’s humor. “I enjoy a good conundrum. Generally, however, they don’t affect the fate of armies and possibly the future of England. If the French are using a code wheel for communication, we’ll never decrypt it by our standard old-fashioned methods.”
“Chewing it to death,” Nick reiterated through a yawn. “You haven’t the blunt to volunteer again, and the War Office won’t have you. You know your only choice if you want to see more of that code is to marry wealth and buy colors. So either give up the problem or marry. A simple enough choice.”
Blake ran a hand through the silver hair at his temple and spoke through clenched molars. “What, precisely, have I to offer a wealthy wife?”
“Certainly not charm,” Nick said, amused by his own wit.
Blake knew he couldn’t throw a punch at his best friend, not in a duke’s study leastways. Besides, despite all his indolent manners, Nick had a punishing bunch of fives of his own. And he was right, confound it. Content with the freedom of his bachelor life, Blake had never cultivated charm.
“This party is a waste of time,” he said. “I’ll head back to London in the morning. Maybe I’ll have a better idea after I’ve cleared my head.” To hell with doctor’s orders. He’d ridden sedately earlier, but at the moment, he needed a bruising fight or a punishing ride.
“You’ll leave without telling your family farewell?” Nick lifted his golden-brown eyebrows skeptically.
Damn and blast.
If he bade them farewell, they’d flutter and protest and ultimately wouldn’t let him leave at all. But sneaking away wasn’t an option. Setting down his glass, he stalked out. Agreeing to this house party had been a huge mistake. Only the presence of Castlereagh had tempted him out of his usual lairs.
To compound his annoyance, his father was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. As much as Blake’s overprotective family nettled him, he could not return their benevolence with disrespect. It irritated him that they did not recognize he was a grown man of nearly thirty, but he could not change his parents. Nor, he privately conceded, would he wish to.
“Your mother and I would like to speak with you,” the baron said affably, catching his son’s elbow and steering him toward the ladies’ parlor.
“I will not become a vicar,” Blake warned, anticipating a much-argued subject.
Portly, balding, and half a head shorter than his youngest son, the baron did not respond to this opening volley. “I’ve had a bit of good luck at the tables. Your mother and I have discussed this for some months, and we thought perhaps we could put the prize to good use.”
Blake had long since given up hope that his superstitious mother would allow money to pass into his hand. She was violently opposed to his joining the army, which is what she knew he would do if he could afford an officer’s colors. She had wished for her youngest son to stay in Shropshire as a rural vicar and marry a local girl to provide her with more grandchildren to dandle on her knee. Blake’s bachelor freedom in London was a severe disappointment to her. His penchant for sport horrified her.
“Mother.” Entering the parlor, he greeted Lady Montague with a nod, noting that even his unmarried sister, Frances, had been excluded from this tête-à-tête. Seeing his spinster sister matched with some respectable bachelor was the presumed reason they had attended the house party.
With resignation, Blake prepared himself for the onslaught of pleas to cease his careless existence and knuckle down to family duty.
“Oh, you’re limping!” Lady Montague cried. “Your leg must still be hurting. Sit, sit, why aren’t you in bed by now?” His mother gestured at the cushion beside her on the love seat.
Blake waited for his father to take the big chair beside the fireplace, then leaned a hip against a writing desk and crossed his arms. His chances of escape were better if he did not make himself comfortable.
“It is not even midnight, and my leg will heal better if I stand,” he said in answer to his mother’s admonishments. “I’ll be leaving in the morning, so I trust you’ll enjoy the rest of the house party.”
“Oh, no, no, you cannot leave yet!” Lady Montague cried. “You must hear us out, then stay. There might be dancing! Are you set on breaking my heart?”
Having heard this plaintive cry since childhood, Blake managed to withstand it. “I hardly believe dancing appropriate on one good leg,” he said dryly.
“Oh, dear, of course not, but we have had the most interesting conversation with Lady Belden. You must meet—”
“Perhaps we should explain our intent first,” the baron suggested with good humor. He clasped his hands across the waistcoat straining over his belly and regarded his son with the fondness that always made Blake feel like a guilty child. “I cannot enjoy watching your mother fret over your well-being. Since being tossed from Oxford over the contretemps with the dean, you’ve been involved in three duels that I know of, nearly broken your neck racing horses across country, fought against some of the toughest pugilists in the ring, and now nearly got yourself killed by shipping out to Portugal without a word to us.”
Blake might have explained that he did these things for money and because he was damned bored, but his father’s solution was for him to become a vicar, have no money, and be damned bored. There was no winning that circular thinking. So he waited to see where his parents’ latest whim might lead.
“Your mother and I have talked about it,” the baron continued, “and we’ve decided you simply need a little incentive to look around and find a nice girl and settle down.”
Blake refrained from sighing with impatience. His lack of enthusiasm did not deter his parents.
“Your father has won the most darling house in Chelsea!” Lady Montague said with enthusiasm, waving her plump hands as she spoke. “We thought perhaps we should use it for Frances’s dowry, but she dislikes London, so it did not seem right.”
“Chelsea is not London,” Blake reminded her. “It is at the very least half an hour or more outside the city. Frances should be fine there.”
“But Frances has a dowry, and you do not,” his mother continued. “With a lovely house to offer, you might have a choice of young ladies. Why, we have met the most charming—”
With the practice of experience, the baron diverted this overflow of information. “It’s Carrington House. A fairly large, respectable estate, I’m told. I’ve not been out to inspect it, but the late viscount often entertained there. He was well known in political circles, so I’m assured it is a substantial asset.”
Carrington House
. The devil in Blake smirked in satisfaction. Harold, Viscount Carrington, had finally lost his family home at a gaming table. At last, the bastard had suffered the penance he deserved. Outwardly, Blake merely tilted his head to show he was listening.
“I thought to offer the use of the house as a marriage settlement if you decide on a gal before the end of the year,” his father said. “But if you do not, then I’ll have to sell it. A place like that cannot be left empty for long, and I haven’t the interest in maintaining it.” The baron settled back in satisfaction, having said his piece.
“That is extremely generous of you, sir,” Blake said politely. “I’ll certainly take it into consideration should I chance upon a marriageable female. But I will remind you that marriage is not likely to change my habits, so if that is your intent, you may as well sell now.”
His mother patted her chest and blinked away tears. “You will be the death of me yet. You know I lost two brothers to war and another to accident who all bore the same silver streak in their hair that you have. It is not just superstition that those who wear it die before they’re thirty. Do not make me bury my son, I beg you! Going off to war and fighting are just asking for trouble.”
Blake did not need to be reminded of mortality. He had been a lad of six when he’d watched as his uncle was swept away in a flood. But neither did he believe in foolish wives’ tales. “If it is my fate to die before I’m thirty”—which gave him a mere six months to live—“I’d rather go courageously, and with honor, than sleeping in my bed. What is the purpose of living if we do not improve the world we inhabit? I thank you for your generosity, and I give you good day, madam, sir.”
He bowed himself out, leaving his mother weeping and his father to console her. It had ever been thus. He saw no means to change it.
Nevertheless, the possibility of owning Viscount Carrington’s home filled him with wicked satisfaction. The bastard had cheated a good friend of his, forcing Acton Penrose to enlist in the army just to have food in his belly, and he was certain Penrose wasn’t the only one Carrington had cheated over the years. In retaliation for Penrose’s fate, Blake had pierced the viscount’s shoulder with a bullet in a duel. It seemed perfect justice that the fat lordling should lose his home after causing others to lose theirs.
Perhaps he ought to consider his father’s offer for the pure gratification of seeing “Carrion’s” expression when he learned who now owned his family estate.