Taming of the Beast (Scandalous Affairs #2) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,114
he caught the wizened, white-haired lord’s wry grin. “But I have absolutely nothing to offer her.”
“A Miss Poplar, I take it.”
He tensed. How…?
“The lady took the liberty of writing me a note and sharing what you’ve done these past years, looking after those children and your sister.”
“It wasn’t her place,” he said brusquely, his neck heating.
“Because you’d rather I believe you are as terrible as you’re so determined the world should see you?” Lord Lothian asked with the same gentleness he’d done when speaking to Tynan as a boy.
“Because I am,” he said flatly. “You saw that yourself.” It was why Lord Lothian had turned down his requests.
Grabbing his kerchief from the cluttered table of greenery and flowers, the marquess studied him for a long while, wiping at his brow. Between the balmy warmth cast by the glass room and the vibrant display of flowers and trees and bushes in full bloom, one would find themselves confused as to the real season that existed beyond this abundant space. “So this is goodbye?”
Tynan faced the man who’d saved him, the man who’d given him so much, the man from whom Tynan certainly had no right asking for another single thing. But he’d humble himself for Faye Poplar. “I…there is nothing for me here. No future.” No work. Only enemies who’d delight in his being powerless. “I might go someplace and start over, where I’m not just the pitiable son of a drunken brute born to a workhouse.”
We can go to America.
He’d rejected her outright, seen only the impossibility of it because his life was here.
But what was life in this place anyway for a person outside of the peerage? There was little hope of advancement. There were even fewer opportunities for one with Tynan’s less-than-humble origins. And the opportunities he’d had, he’d squandered. There was certainly enough money to see him and his sister and the boys he looked after comfortable in a new world.
“Tynan?” the marquess asked with the same concern as when they’d met years earlier.
“I intend to leave for America.” Tynan finally brought himself to complete that thought that would add a layer of realness to his plan. “I’ve not come to ask you for anything. You have already done far more than I’ve deserved. And I’ve not properly, with my words or with the way I”—he grimaced—“abused my post, shown the deserved gratitude for all you did for me and my sister. As such, this is goodbye—”
“You’ve arrived at just the right time, my boy,” the marquess interrupted in entirely too cheerful tones.
“I…” Tynan frowned. “Lord—?”
Lord Lothian motioned to the potted plant before him. “It is a magnificent plant, is it not?”
Frowning, Tynan glanced downward. Plant was certainly a generous descriptor of the sticklike thing before him. Mangled, with twisted branches bare of blooms, buds, or greenery, none would ever dare remark upon the plant as a thing of beauty. “I… It is… lovely?”
The marquess chuckled and patted Tynan on the back. “You always were a terrible liar.”
Which were ironic words given the fact that being a master of duplicity was what he’d come to be known for in his dealings with everyone over the years. Except with this man before him… and Faye.
From the very start, Faye had known precisely when he’d given her half-truths and had followed him and challenged him because of it.
“Ah, I take it by your reaction you have judged my night-blooming cereus?” The old man made a clucking sound with his tongue and then proceeded to issue platitudes and words of praise for the flower. “It is native to the Americas,” the marquess went on.
A botany lesson wasn’t why he’d come, not when his fate and future hung in this state of misery, and yet… “Indeed?” he made himself say. Because the old, eccentric lord had always been kinder and more generous than a bastard like Tynan had deserved.
“Oh, yes.” The marquess patted the stool next to him, and Tynan hesitated a moment. He’d important strings of his life to tie up. Plans to make, lest he be discovered and done in. Even so, he found himself sliding onto the seat.
“There are legends that surround the tale of this plant.”
Tynan couldn’t see why.
“Are you familiar with the Native Americans?”
“I am not.” Having been taught to read by his mother, the only education he’d received afterward had come because of this man before him, who’d seen him properly schooled. Even so, that education had not included such obscure details of faraway peoples.