A Lady's Dream Come True - Grace Burrowes Page 0,117

But that was the point: The Coventry was comfortably bland, not showy, not distracting. The focus of the patrons was to be on the play and on each other.

Ash’s focus was on Della Haddonfield, whom he had given up trying to forget months ago.

“Chastain drinks when he loses and he loses nearly every time he plays,” Tresham said, wandering between the tables. “Sooner or later, he’ll drink too much and start wittering on about that time he eloped with Lady Della Haddonfield. He spent half the god-damned night with her in that inn, Ash. I should kill him for that alone.”

“I know, Tresham,”—God, do I know—“but Della apparently went with him willingly. Bellefonte would tell you if that weren’t the case, I trust?”

“I have no bloody idea.” Tresham perched on a dealer’s stool and took up a deck of cards. “I am not one of them. Your brother Will married into the Haddonfield clan. What does he say?”

“Will and Susannah are ruralizing. I gather several litters of puppies are due any day, and thus Willow remains in the country.”

“I hate this,” Tresham said, shuffling the deck with casual expertise. “Bellefonte ought to challenge Chastain. Bellefonte’s a peer. Nobody would say a word if Chastain got the worse of the encounter.”

A peer could not honorably challenge a commoner. “Deal me in.” Ash took up a stool at the same table. “Has it occurred to you that Della might be smitten with Chastain? She might be heartbroken that Chastain’s father interrupted their elopement.”

“Theo’s theory is that Della chose Chastain because he’s nothing more than a handsome lackwit. Della could manage him without looking up from her embroidery hoop. She’s an earl’s daughter, so Papa Chastain would eventually reconcile himself to the match.” Tresham gathered up the cards and set the deck in the middle of the table. “I shall beat you at cribbage.”

Lady Theodosia, Tresham’s lovely wife, had apparently already had a turn trying to speak sense to him. Ash produced a cribbage board from the shelf under the table.

“You don’t think Della smitten, then?”

“I know she isn’t.” Tresham’s tone was gloomy. “She once mentioned Chastain to me when I drove out with her. Her tone was less than respectful.”

Ash cut for the crib and pulled the low card. “Feelings can change.”

“Not those feelings. Della expressed pity for his sire, and the opinion that Chastain will bankrupt the family within two years of gaining control of the Chastain fortune. She’s right.”

Play moved along, with the cards favoring Ash. His leading peg was halfway around the board when Sycamore sauntered in looking dashing and windblown in his riding attire.

“That is the good brandy at Tresham’s elbow, if I’m not mistaken,” Sycamore said, pausing to remove his spurs. “Since when do we give away the good stuff, brother mine?”

Ash picked up his cards to find another double run, his third of the game so far. “We are generous with poor Tresham because he needed a medicinal tot for his nerves.” As had Ash. “I’m beating him soundly.”

Sycamore peered over Tresham’s shoulder. “William Chastain needs a sound beating. Who’s with me?”

Tresham put down his cards. “What have you heard?”

Sycamore could be tactful—about once every five years—and then only out of a perverse impulse to keep his older siblings off balance.

“Chastain was apparently in his club last night, lamenting that his French bride refuses to cry off, despite the failed elopement with a certain Lady Delightful.”

Tresham was on his feet, so quickly he knocked his stool over. “I will kill him, slowly, after protracted torture. I will maim him, and cut the idiot tongue from his empty head. All of polite society knows that Della’s given name is Delilah, and Chastain apparently knows it too. By Jehovah’s thunder, I ought to ruin his father for siring such a walking pile of offal.”

“If you do ruin him,” Sycamore said, taking a sip of Tresham’s brandy, “please do it here, so the club gets a bit of the notoriety and ten percent of the kitty.”

“You cannot.” Ash said, getting to his feet. “You cannot in any way intimate that Chastain’s wild maunderings have any connection to reality or to Della, and you most assuredly cannot strut about all but proclaiming that her ladyship has an illegitimate connection to you.”

“But—”

Ash stepped closer. “No. Not if you care for you her, which you loudly claim to do. The Haddonfields have substantial consequence, they have weathered other scandals. You can be a friend of the family, a cordial acquaintance, but you