The Courtship Caper (Scandalous Miss Brightwells 6)

He’d thought Dorothea’s death had released him to find what he wanted. He’d searched and made inquiries the length and breadth of the British Isles for…

He swallowed down the lump of pain and disappointment. A year had passed since Dorothea had died and finally freed him to be with the girl he loved.

But...where was she?

Since returning from France where he’d followed yet another disappointing lead, gambling and winning were the first vices he’d tumbled into. And he was good at it.

Better at it, certainly, than helping maidens in distress.

Or should that be matrons in distress? Well, that’s what he’d thought he’d been doing.

Self-disgust squeezed his entrails, but he was not about to take relief in kindness to his opponent. Society hadn’t shown him any quarter after Lady Banks had set him up for a prize fool. As for Mrs Compton, he knew what he should do, but…

“I’ll have the remaining hundred paid by the end of the week, Mr Wells.”

Sebastian set down his cue and reached for his drink; the dry notes still crumpled in his hand as he peered more closely at the youthful, unformed features of the lad quaking before him. His vanquished opponent was even younger than Sebastian had pegged him.

“What? You wagered more than you have to give to me now?”

>

“I can get it by...by Friday.”

“Friday?” Sebastian stared at the notes young Barnacle had handed over, and another surge of disgust and disillusionment welled up his gullet like bile. The lad’s linen was not the snowy white that indicated privilege. Lord knew what a loss like this would mean to him when, to Sebastian, it would mean...nothing.

Yes, nothing.

Dorothea had decried gambling as if it were devil’s play and Sebastian, fettered by honor, had curbed his natural impulses during his years with her to be what he’d promised to be: honorable and faithful.

Not for Dorothea’s sake, either, he reminded himself grimly.

Yet look where that had got him?

Idling his life away in the pursuit of pleasure because that’s what he thought he’d missed most during his cloistered years of dreary devotion.

His palms began to itch while his bleary vision took in the trembling mouth of the boy who was too young to be here yet old enough to know better.

He should be taught a lesson. It was only right that Sebastian claim his winnings and let the lad suffer his fate.

With a sigh, he raised his arm to better consider what he held in the palm of his hand—a tidy sum for himself, perhaps; but the boy’s future, also—frowning as he pondered what to do.

“I know I should have had the blunt on me now, but...but I can have it by...Thursday if you can’t wait ‘til Friday.”

“Thursday!” Sebastian thrust the notes back to the boy. “If not now, then forget it! You should be in leading strings, not getting your nose bloodied in places like this.”

He barely heard young Barnacle’s incoherent gratitude for Mowbray, an erstwhile friend and lowlife frequenter of dens of iniquity like this, for all that he was set to inherit an earldom, was throwing his arm about Sebastian’s shoulders and saying with too much familiarity, “Barbara told me to tell you her husband is away in the country next week. He’s completely forgiven her now he knows it wasn’t Dendridge in her bed. So, you have carte blanche to see her. And—” he touched the side of his nose – “no obligations. She promises!”

Sebastian blinked to clear his head. Barbara. Mrs Compton. A right mull of matters he’d made there and only himself to blame. “Please send Barbara my regrets.” He knew he was slurring and that he made unattractive company.

Mowbray was taking his role as apparent broker with great seriousness. “My cousin is no danger to you, Wells. Her husband has agreed to take her back and,” Mowbray’s leer was sickening, “let her take her pleasure where it pleases her.”

An image of Barbara’s creamy limbs spread in abandon for both their pleasure was not a comfort right now. Lord, if Sebastian had only known what he was getting himself into when he’d thought he was playing the good Samaritan.

He shook his head. “Send Barbara my best wishes. He turned toward the door for the smell of ale, sweat, and greed was suddenly overwhelming. “I’ve decided to accept an invitation to spend a week in Somerset.”

“Good God! The country—when you could kick up a lark here?”

“Precisely.” It came as a sudden illumination that if Sebastian had not found what he had been looking for, at least he knew what he wasn’t looking for. The noise, the commotion, the excitement, the ambition. These things weren’t for him, though Dorothea might have been wrong about so much else regarding her husband’s character.