“Do you?” Sir Edward’s brow rose and his voice was dry.
“We shall escort them!”
Jules announced blissfully.
Sir Edward raised his eyes heavenward. “That cannot be thought proper, Jules. I don’t think it will serve.”
“Wait and listen…”
* * *
“I cannot believe this.” Miles stared hard at his friend and with an expression of total disbelief. “I have known you most of my life. We have been through thick and thin. If things were so dire…why did you not come to me?”
“Miles, you don’t hold your own purse strings and won’t till you turn five and twenty. There was nothing you could do.”
“Yes, but even so, I would have found a way to help. Vern…what you have done…why…this is outrageous! How could you—‘tis no more than the action of a common criminal!”
Vern’s hand worked his white-gold hair frantically. His lips were drawn and though he was a man he suddenly thought he might give over to tears. “Don’t I know it!” He shouted instead. “What other solution was there? Miles, the bank would have taken Berkley Grange. My sister would have been put into service…my sister, Miles…and me, I would have ended in debtor’s prison or shipped off to Australia!”
“Certes! You should have come to me. I would have found a way. I am very wealthy Vern and I would have found a way to get my hands on some of it. Mark me. This is bad, very bad.”
“What is done is done. Understand this Miles. I was half out of my mind with worry that night I first met Farley at the Mermaid. I had been drinking deep—too deep. I didn’t realize at first what I was getting into. The next morning, I wasn’t even sure Farley was real.”
“Not sure he was real?” Miles squealed with disbelief. “Now Vern, that is doing it too brown.”
“No, no, Miles, you don’t understand. I told you, I was in my cups when I gave him the information…and then later, when he came back to me for more, well, it was so damned easy and the blunt…he handed it over and it staved off some of the creditors.”
Miles considered him for a long moment before he spoke, “Only one thing to do.”
“What’s that?” Vern was surprised that his friend had already found a solution.
“Leave the country. I’ll come with you and Star. I’ll marry her. Settle on her and your debts will be done. We’ll go to Italy….or some other outlandish place. Never see Farley again. Then when he has moved off, we’ll come back.”
Vern stared at his friend with great disbelief and some disgust. “Don’t be absurd! First of all, Star won’t marry you. Second of all, we can’t leave the country. Am I to pack my sister off and run like a common criminal?”
“Well, don’t mean to be indelicate and all that, but…Vern, you are…a common criminal. Not a hunted one—yet, but, you never know. Best to leave the country. Star will marry me to help you and I don’t mind why she marries me just so that she does.”
“I am saddled with a madman for a friend,” Vern said closing his eyes. “Do be quiet now and let me think.”
“Shouldn’t, if I were you. That’s what started your problems in the first place. You--thinking you could take them on alone, is why you are now in trouble,” Miles said with a lecturing finger.
Vern controlled the impulse to make the attempt to get out of bed and strangle his dearest friend. “Are you, or are you not, interested in how I may now handle the matter of Farley?”
A heated discussion ensued for some minutes and so occupied them that they did not hear Dilly’s soft footsteps as she arrived. She was in fact, put to the trouble of raising her voice above theirs in order to be heard.
“Oi am sorry, m’lord…”
“Dilly, come in, do…” Miles said flirtatiously.
Vern sent him a hard look of disapproval. Dilly was a pretty young maid, but shy. He didn’t want her distressed any further by his womanizing friend.
She wrung her hands and bobbed her head, “’Tis the gentlemen—so insistent they be about visiting with ye. They wouldn’t wait below…and they be wishful of seeing ye right now,” she said and waved her hand to indicate the two men who had followed in her wake.
* * *
Star considered Georgie thoughtfully as they trotted their horses down the deer path, taking a shortcut to Berkley. Her friend looked lovely and fashionable in her riding ensemble of dark blue. One would never think Georgina was a modern-day crusader. She was though and insisted that all women should be. The notion of Georgie marching in London and holding a sign demanding that women be considered equal to men made her smile proudly as well as giggle. While Star was in theory for all that Georgie stood for, she wasn’t the marching and waving sign sort of woman. She sighed and silently berated herself as lazy.
At the moment, however, Georgie rode her horse quietly and sedately. Star eyed her and said, “What, nothing in politics to go on and on about?”