expend enough energy to tackle learning his letters?”
Claudia glanced across the distance between them and where her brother played. “A year or so, I would think.”
Callie laughed at that. “You read more than a little, don’t you?”
Claudia shrugged. “I do. But I hate reading boring school books.”
“Then what do you like to read about?”
“Adventure,” the little girl answered.
“I think we might be able to squeeze a bit of adventure into our lessons today. You get Charlotte and I will get William and we will head back.”
*
Winn hadn’t gone to his club, after all. While it had been his destination to start, he’d been waylaid by business. That seemed to always be the way. For weeks, he’d been dodging an acquaintance who wanted to lure him into a risky business venture. Risk wasn’t really Winn’s cup of tea. Solid, sound, boring investments with smaller but more certain rewards were fine with him. Still, being dragged along with a group of three other fellows to the home of the fourth man being courted for the scheme, he decided anything was better than his own home and the sweet temptation of Miss Calliope St. James’ company.
As they reached the elaborate facade of the elegant mansion that belonged to the Gerald Alford, Duke of Averston, Winn couldn’t hide his surprise as his brows arched upward in incredulity. “You’re courting Averston for this scheme?”
It was a well-known fact that Averston, despite his title and luxurious home, had little ready capital, at least on a personal level. The houses and properties were maintained by the same trust that governed all the wealth left behind by his predecessor. The former Duke of Averston had never married, but had sired a child out of wedlock to whom all of his personal wealth and unentailed properties had been bequeathed. But until that missing heir was found, there was little Averston could do. Indeed, it seemed his only vice was to continually redecorate and “improve” the properties that were in his care. The only other remaining member of the family was the dowager duchess, a woman known by one and all to be a veritable dragon. She had a separate residence but it was widely understood that she kept her grandson on a short leash.
“Well, he’s expressed interest and he’s in the process of petitioning the House of Lords to declare the previous duke’s will void in light of the missing heir’s continued missing status. We might get lucky,” Charles Burney, the mastermind behind the imports venture, offered with a grin. “Surely no one thinks the child survived at this point!”
Unless Burney had some inside information, Winn was fairly certain the man was set for disappointment. Averston and the dowager duchess had been actively trying to break his late uncle’s will since the man’s passing. Still, it was a diversion that would keep him from the chaos of his own home, so he gamely followed the group inside.
“His grace awaits you in the library,” the butler intoned with all the formality and dignity that a ducal butler should possess.
Winn wondered for a moment if he might steal him away, but then nixed the idea. His young footman would do well enough. His own household was not nearly so high in the instep that he required such a servant, after all. And the young man had been impossibly proud at the prospect of his improved situation. It wouldn’t do at all to renege on that offer now.
The library was all the way at the end of a long corridor. Marble floors, art from all over the world and all of it beyond price, along with gilded cornices and elaborate carved moldings combined to create a feeling of opulence and decadence that could only be rivaled by Carlton House itself. It was too much for his taste, too much fuss, too boastful of one’s wealth. It made him distinctly uncomfortable. Perhaps because it was such an effrontery when the money being spent so lavishly on such interiors didn’t belong to the man who lived amongst them. It seemed to Winn that Averston would rather squander the money than see it go to someone else, even in theory.
“Isn’t it a sight?” Burney said, elbowing him in the ribs. “I don’t think Golden Ball himself could surpass it!”
“That’s hardly an endorsement,” Winn said disapprovingly, “Given that Mr. Ball Hughes is now living in France all but penniless after having squandered his very substantial fortune.”
That sobered Burney immediately who then straightened and began to speak