him an eccentric. Cursed with an insatiable desire to travel the world, he’d spent the better part of his life abroad, the last years of which he’d dragged his grandson along behind him. It had only been recently—as St. Clare approached his thirtieth birthday—that the earl had begun to show signs that he wasn’t so very different from a typical English aristocrat after all.
“I have it from Jessup that you fought a duel this morning,” Allendale said.
St. Clare saw no reason to deny it. His grandfather of all people should understand. He was no stranger to affairs of honor. Proficient with pistols and swords, it was he who had honed St. Clare into the uncannily lethal shot that he was today. “I did.”
“With an inconsequential squire from the country.” Allendale’s tone held an unmistakable note of warning.
St. Clare gave his newspaper a regretful glance before folding it and laying it down on the table beside his plate. “An heir to a baronetcy if that makes any difference.”
“A baronetcy in Somerset.”
He met his grandfather’s formidable gray glare. “Your point, sir?”
“Be careful.”
“I am exceedingly careful.”
“I believe you know what I mean.”
St. Clare leaned back in his chair. “As you see, I have survived the encounter without a scratch.”
“Have you?” Allendale’s mouth tightened. “I was given to understand that the pistol ball singed your shirtsleeve.”
St. Clare inwardly cursed Jessup. There was a reason his grandfather often referred to the elderly butler as Argus. Just like the mythical giant, Jessup seemed to have a hundred eyes. “A trifling thing,” he said stiffly.
“And what of your opponent? This Somerset heir to a baronetcy. How did he fare?”
“Better than he deserved.”
Allendale fixed him with a long look. “You got him through the shoulder, did you? Which shoulder? The right?”
St. Clare gave a curt nod.
“And with which hand does this fellow wield his weapons?”
A slow smile edged St. Clare’s mouth. “Up until this morning, his right one.”
“That pleases you, does it? Tell me, my boy, what was it that this squire, or whatever in blazes he is, did to earn your notice? Cheat at cards?”
St. Clare shrugged one shoulder. “He might have done.”
“And I suppose you realized that, when you hinted at that fact in the middle of a crowded gaming hell, he might be provoked into calling you out?” Allendale didn’t wait for an answer. “Well, you’ve paid this country nobody back quite handsomely for whatever small offense he’s given. For the next month, he’ll be hard pressed to raise his spoon for soup let alone his pistol or his reins and whip. Are you satisfied now? Indeed, I hope you are, sir, for you’ve fought your first and last duel in England.”
St. Clare met his grandfather’s burst of ire with silence. The same silence with which he’d endured the earl’s explosions of temper many times before.
“One month! That’s how long we’ve been back. Have you no self-control, man? No sense of purpose? What were you doing in a blasted gaming hell in the first place?” Allendale’s face reddened with anger. “Do you think I’ve wasted all of these years with you so that you could go the way of your father? The Earls of Allendale have descended in an unbroken line for over two hundred years! Straight down from Ivo Beresford himself! Do you imagine I’ll allow that line to be broken? That I’ll allow the title to pass to that idiot son of my second cousin? I tell you, sir, I will see us both damned first!”
St. Clare poured out a cup of coffee, and without a word, pushed it across the table to his grandfather.
Allendale scowled but nonetheless lifted the cup and took a sip. After a moment, the redness receded from his face. “I told you when we left Florence that the time had come to do your duty. There’s to be no more mucking about, my boy. You’ll find yourself a wife and get yourself an heir. It’s what you owe to the title. It’s what you owe to me.”
St. Clare didn’t argue. He knew very well the duty he owed to the title. For years, his life had been one long, grueling exercise in preparing for his role as the next Earl of Allendale. Anything his grandfather thought he should learn, he had learned. Any skill that had to be mastered, he had mastered. In time, St. Clare’s own ambitions had receded, dimmed by the constant need to prove himself. To excel at every challenge set before him.