Abandoned to the Prodigal - Mary Lancaster Page 0,46
other ladies.” She frowned. “But oddly enough, he was at Connaught Place the night—that night—and he was still there in the morning.”
Her father frowned. “You mean, he saw you there?”
“I think so, yes.”
“He must know what happened and that you are innocent.”
“Then I wish he would say so,” Juliet said tartly.
“Perhaps he intends to. He is proposing to visit us while we are holding Kitty’s engagement dinner, in fact, and I don’t believe I have time to put him off. But then, it may work out for the best.”
“What may?” Juliet asked, bewildered.
“His assurance. If you are there. He writes quite cryptically, but if I’m reading it aright, he is implying he might offer for you. And if he does…and if Jeremy Catesby stops behaving like a nincompoop, you may yet have a choice of suitor. Which cannot be bad.”
“Can’t it?” she said, gawping at him.
“No…Odd who your friends turn out to be sometimes.”
“Is Lord Barden your friend?” she managed.
“I didn’t think so. Well, not after I won most of his fortune off him at hazard one night.”
Her eyes widened. “That was Lord Barden?”
His eyes refocused on her face. “I’m not proud of it. But he would keep playing.” He shrugged. “Debt of honor. He had to pay, though it left him damnably short. But at least he got the place with Prinny, so he didn’t starve.”
“You would consider a poor man for me?” she blurted, her mind for some reason on Daniel Stewart.
“It’s true I wouldn’t have up until a week ago,” her father replied. “But if it gets us out of this scrape, I’ll give an even more handsome dowry. I’d never let you want for anything.” He waved the letter at her. “Go and eat, girl. You look half-starved.”
Chapter Eleven
Despite the rain, Dan spent most of the day outside. After a quick breakfast with his mother, he rescued Gun from his makeshift kennel in the garden and trudged over the fields with him to meet Patrick and Pat.
The older man was delighted that Lord Myerly had finally agreed to some basic repairs and to look again at plans he’d shown him two years ago. Young Pat was furious because his lordship hadn’t gone nearly far enough to save the estate.
“You’ll never get it all out of him at once,” Dan said when Patrick had ridden off to report again to his lordship. “And at least he’s talking to your father now. We have to start somewhere.”
“Well, I have to hand it to you,” Pat admitted. “No one else has ever got him as far as the desperate repairs before.”
“We’ll see how much further we can get him before he throws me out the house,” Dan said cheerfully. “But if I’m going to talk him into things, or at least try to, I’ll need a better understanding of what I’m talking about. Will you show me?”
“So that you know I’m not talking rubbish?”
“That, too,” Dan admitted, but Pat didn’t take offense, merely set off toward the ditch at the foot of the field. The rain had slowed to a mere drizzle.
By the end of the afternoon, Dan knew more than he’d ever imagined about drainage, enclosures, and crop rotations, and had grasped the sense as well as the scale of the improvements Pat wanted to make.
Exhausted, but with his mind buzzing around the problems and possibilities, he arrived home with Gun in time for dinner. The rain had gone off altogether, so he was more or less dried off as he walked upstairs and straight into his grandfather’s rooms.
Waits looked wary. “His lordship’s just preparing for dinner, sir.”
“Who’s that?” the old man yelled from the bedchamber. “If it’s that blithering, prancing idiot, send him about his business.”
Dan, who had no difficulty in recognizing his cousin Hugh from this description, grimaced as he sauntered over to the bedchamber. “I might be an idiot, but I don’t think I prance. May I come in?”
“You are in, are you not?” his grandfather snapped.
“I won’t keep you,” Dan promised.
“Damned right. You look as if you’ve been dragged through a hedge backward.”
“If I haven’t, it’s only because Pat didn’t think of it. He did drag me through several ditches, though. There’s quite a science to this farming business, isn’t there?”
The old man regarded him with contempt. “How would I know? I’m a gentleman, not a damned farmer.”
“You’re a poorer gentleman than you need to be,” Dan said, frankly. “Which brings me to what I wanted to ask you. Do I have your permission