Undressed with the Marquess (Lost Lords of London #3) - Caldwell, Christi Page 0,10
called in, and debtors are seeking to secure repayment for monies loaned.”
It did not escape Dare’s notice that the bespectacled servant had failed to give the number he sought. Nor could there be any doubting the reason why . . .
There was nothing?
He glanced around at the room’s silent occupants: the duke and duchess, the young lady. That trio remained impressive masters of their emotions and expressions.
Dare sat up slowly. “Is this some manner of jest?” he snapped.
“I fear not,” the duke said in sad tones. “Upon your father’s death”—God rot the hateful bastard’s soul—“the title passed to your brother, who, as you since have learned, passed.” At that, the duchess dissolved into a quiet show of weeping, dabbing at her eyes. “He ventured into trade.”
And Dare wouldn’t safely wager a pence that the older woman was crying about the work her departed grandson had taken part in.
“Aren’t there rules amongst you people that lords don’t dabble in trade?” Dare asked impatiently. “Dirty hands and all?” Of all people, his brother would have known that.
The duchess gave a pleased nod. “Even gone all these years, he knows as much,” she said to her husband. “Your brother couldn’t have had the same foresight,” she muttered to herself.
“Yes, but it was promising to be lucrative,” the duke said with a defensiveness on the departed man’s past that not a single member of Dare’s former family had ever shown to him.
And the irony was not lost on Dare that this should have proven the one time his paragon of a brother, preferred and always dutiful, had chosen to do something other than that which was expected of him as a lord.
He felt . . . an unexpected wave of sadness that he’d not ever been around to see that different side of Perrin. Perrin, who, in Dare’s absence, had also become “Perry,” that more playful name not at all suiting the serious boy he’d been.
Feeling a stare on him, he looked and found Kinsley eyeing him with a sad little glimmer in her eyes.
Then as quickly as that softening had come, it was gone.
Kinsley Greyson smiled, and it was an expression Dare recognized all too well. Cold and hard and taunting, it was the same grin he had affected in the streets when dealing with his foes. “Disappointed, I trust?”
“Be quiet, Kin,” the duke said tersely. He turned back to Dare. “It bears stating that it was not your brother’s ventures that sank the fortunes.”
Dare stared at him. Then how else was there to account—
“Him,” the duchess seethed.
“A distant cousin inherited after Perrin’s passing”—His Grace took over the telling—“and he was—”
“Is,” Lady Kinsley piped in.
“Is a scapegrace.” His Grace shook his head regretfully. “Spent it all. On wagering and women and—”
“Harold,” the duchess gasped.
Color filled the older man’s cheeks. “Other things. Lavish parties. The finest brandy and other spirits. Not a pence was spared.”
Not a pence was spared . . .
If you’d only returned when Connor Steele searched you out . . . Then, however, Dare had been so confident he wanted no part of the nobility. He’d happily banished the detective from London.
And in the ultimate twist of irony, with an untimely trip to the gallows, Dare had found himself forced back to the place he’d sworn to never be, only to find everything that mattered here gone.
Heron cleared his throat. “The entailed, as well as the unentailed, properties are largely . . . bankrupt.”
“I gathered as much, Heron,” Dare snapped. This would be the moment the rambling servant thought required clarity.
Dare would have been resurrected to the role of marquess, only to inherit a bankrupt title. His bloody luck.
Suddenly, the hilarity of it all hit him. Kicking his legs up, he propped the heels of his boots near the papers Heron had set out . . . and slowly laughed. “You brought me back here, and dragged this out a week, now, only to tell me . . .” He looked to the man-of-affairs.
The spectacled, wiry fellow cleared his throat. “There is nothing,” he clarified.
“I thank you for saving my neck.” He shoved to his feet. “But this has been a waste. I want an accounting of what is mine, free and clear, to sell, and the value of the properties that I’m also free to sell.” He eyed the furnishings . . . threadbare and old. But good enough to fetch some funds.
He’d strip the whole estate, take what he could, and then go.