Lady Windermere's Lover

Dedication

To Cynthia, who shares a name with my heroine, if little else

Contents

Chapter 1

London, 1793

I
t wasn’t every day a man turned twenty-one. Come to think of it, this would be the only day of his entire life when Damian, Viscount Kendal, achieved that milestone. His friends had promised him a night to remember, and Robert was paying the bill for the best fare the St. James’s Tavern had to offer. They drank several bottles of wine at dinner, and brandy afterward. The occasion merited a celebration as wild, as debauched, as drunken as any they’d ever enjoyed. Robert had marked the occasion of his majority with an elopement to Gretna Green and a new bride, but Damian had quite the opposite in mind.

Freedom. Freedom from the expectations for the heir to an earldom. Freedom from his father.

Liberty. As the citizens of France had tossed off the yoke of the nobility, Damian no longer had to obey the fourth Earl of Windermere. Not that he wanted to string his father up from a lamppost or send him to the guillotine. The French had gone too far. They’d been right about liberty, however. It was heady stuff. He felt nothing was beyond his powers now. Even flight. For a moment he had the sensation that he floated above the table, watching the three of them munch on nuts and sweetmeats and empty glass after glass.

“Let’s have another bottle,” he said. “This one’s mine.” He could buy it with his own money, not just his allowance. He was independent, his own man. “I’ll pay for the whole damn dinner. After another bottle.”

“There’ll be plenty of bottles at Cruikshank’s,” Robert said.

Damian wasn’t particularly fond of Robert’s favorite Pall Mall gaming hell. He’d rather look for clean, comely girls. He glanced at Julian, who shrugged. The latter had been in an odd mood since he returned from France.

“Cruikshank’s it is,” Damian said, remembering that the newly wed Robert eschewed muslin company, at least for the present.

The bottles at Cruikshank’s contained gin. They were well into a game when nausea nibbled at the edge of Damian’s pleasant glow. He muttered something about moving on, finding fresh air and different company. But luck was favoring Robert and there was no way to stop him when he was on a winning streak. Or a losing one, for that matter.

A couple of players dropped out. Julian too. “That’s my limit for tonight.”

“Coward,” Robert said without rancor.

Julian shook his head. “Sensible.”

Even drunk and winning, Robert knew better than to argue with Julian Fortescue, who always did exactly what he wanted. “It’s you and I, Damian. Let’s bet something worth winning. A hundred on this one.”

Guineas passed back and forth. As the bets increased, they exchanged scribbled vowels. Damian lost track of whether he was ahead or behind.

“Tame stuff,” Robert said. “What about this? Everything in front of us and in our pockets too, on one roll.” Suiting actions to words, he pushed the pile of gold and paper forward and tossed in some copper coins, a silk handkerchief, his watch, and the key to his house. Damian followed suit, producing a similar assortment, and a document.

He’d picked up the deed from the family solicitor that afternoon, enjoyed carrying it around, the symbol of his financial independence. And the memory of his dead mother. “Beaulieu,” he said, and snatched it back. “I can’t wager my estate. I won’t.”

To Robert the words
can’t
and
won’t
were like a burr under the saddle. “Do it!” he cried. “I’ll bet Longford against it. Devilish fine property. Good income. Just as good as yours. Maybe better.”

Damian’s hand clutched the heavy parchment. An angel or devil perched on his shoulder told him this was an important day, one that deserved a grand gesture. He goggled at the dice, then blinked away the smoke of cheap candles. What were the odds? Numbers danced meaninglessly in his brain. Marcus Lithgow would know. But the friend who had taught them all how to calculate the chances was abroad again. In Germany, or maybe Holland. Damian glanced up at Julian, who leaned against the wall with his arms folded, regarding them with a twisted smile.

“Shall I?” he asked. Julian was his best friend, had been for years. He wouldn’t steer Damian wrong.

“You’re a man of means now. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” All true. Except Damian didn’t want to gain, because he had what he wanted. So did he need to venture? “What’s the harm? Lose it tonight, you’ll get it back tomorrow.” That was true. If Damian won, he’d give Robert the chance to win it back. Robert would do the same for him. None of their coterie, boon companions for almost five years, ever lost serious amounts to each other. It was a grand gesture with no real risk.

His grip loosened and he let the deed join the flotsam on the shabby baize of the gaming table. His eyes watered. One hand seized the greasy glass and raised it to his lips, the cheap liquor stinging his throat and burning his gut. With the other hand he picked up the battered leather dice box.

“Done,” he said, rattled the dice hard, and let them fly.

The last thing he remembered before he lost consciousness was Robert’s cry of triumph.

T
he following evening Damian boarded the coach for the north of England. He had only enough money for a cheap seat. Traveling outside on the stage in wet, cold weather seemed a just punishment. The rhythm of the horses’ gait drummed out the words
stupid stupid stupid
; as the roads grew worse, each jolt of the coach sharpened his misery with the reminder that the painful reckoning grew ever nearer.

He couldn’t bring himself to return the servant’s surprised greeting with a smile when he stepped in through the massive oak door of Amblethorpe Hall. “Where is His Lordship?” he asked, handing over his sodden greatcoat to the shivering butler. “In the book room?”

“Aye, my lord. Do you wish for any refreshment after your journey?”

“Thank you, no.” Facing his father drunk might be easier, but he’d seek no relief from the scourging he faced.

Even in summer, heat never penetrated the granite walls or lofty arched passages of the ancient fortress. The passage to the rear of the house, gloomy in the November afternoon, seemed both endless and all too short. A blazing fire in his father’s habitual lair offered physical comfort, but nothing else.

“Kendal! What a surprise.” Lord Windermere rose from behind his desk without a smile, but a glint in his eye told Damian that the old man was glad to see him. He took a deep breath and accepted his father’s solemn handshake. “I didn’t expect to see you for some time. I don’t know if you received my letter congratulating you on your majority. Either way, let me repeat my good wishes.”

“Thank you, sir.”

They’d parted on cool terms at the end of the summer, after the usual row about Damian’s friends, habits, and ambitions. God, how he wished he’d heeded his father’s request that he remain at Amblethorpe. He wished he’d never left and gone to Eton. He wished he’d never gone to Oxford and met Robert Townsend and Julian Fortescue. He wished his mother was alive.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. At the moment he felt lowlier than any beggar. He clenched his fists and tightened his jaw.

“So what brings you here? Have the joys of London palled so soon? How was your journey?”

No point making small talk. “I lost Beaulieu.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“On the night of my birthday. I gambled away the estate.”

“I see. We had better sit down.” Lord Windermere took his accustomed seat behind the desk and indicated the opposite chair. They always sat like that in this room, and usually Damian was the recipient of a lecture. A new prick of regret afflicted him that he’d never conversed with his father as an adult. Just when he had theoretically reached that milestone, he’d proven beyond doubt that he was unworthy of being treated as an equal.

His father’s dry tones pierced his despair. “You had better tell me about it.”

It would have been easier if he’d ranted and roared, but overt expressions of emotion had never been his father’s habit. He listened, his features impassive, to Damian’s halting confession.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Damian concluded, “although there’s not much use saying it. I’ve let you down. And the memory of Mama.”

“She loved Beaulieu. It’s all we had left of her.”

Damian nodded, his eyes gritty with sorrow. For days he’d avoided thinking of the family’s happy times at Beaulieu, lest he break down and weep. Now, above all, he must control himself, as his father always did.

Lord Windermere rearranged the perfectly aligned pens on his desk. He picked up his ivory-handled paper knife, a gift from his late wife, and stared at it for a moment. “We must buy it back,” he said.

“It will cost a pretty penny and I don’t even know whom Robert Townsend lost it to.” As he’d learned the next day, Robert’s winning streak hadn’t lasted long.

“Once I discover the new owner I will go to the bankers. I shall start putting money aside at once. There are improvements at Amblethorpe that can be postponed and we shall retrench.”

Worse and worse. Lord Windermere had a most unaristocratic aversion to debt, as Damian heard each time he overspent his allowance. Neither was he given to extravagance or overindulgence.

“How do things stand here?” Damian asked. “I realize I have no right to ask, but I should know what hardships my folly will cause.”

“Our ancient holdings are relatively modest considering the family’s rank. As you are aware, your mother was a considerable heiress. With her estate added to mine you would have been very well-to-do. Regaining the ground lost is not impossible, but neither will it come without sacrifice.”

“What can I do, sir? It goes without saying that I shall live frugally.” His heart sank at a future spent at Amblethorpe without the possibility of escape. “I should look for a profession.”

Considering how well he had taken the news, Damian forgave his father’s derisive curl of the lip. “Do you intend to recoup our fortunes through your skill with a brush?”

Damian gulped. “No, sir. I shall give up painting. I shall endeavor to do just as you wish from now on.”

“As you are my heir, the church is not suitable. There can be no question of the army, I assume. It won’t help matters if you are killed.”

Damian bit back his instinctive reaction; exclaiming that the family might be better off if he died and let Cousin George have the title was the kind of dramatic flourish his father abhorred. “I have a facility for languages,” he said with all the calm he could muster. “You believe I wasted my time traveling abroad the past four years, and I won’t deny that you have reason. Maybe I can turn them to good use after all. Does anyone of your acquaintance have influence in the Foreign Office?”

“I’m not sure that is wise,” his father said with a frown. “Would you not be better off here, safe from temptation?”

“I can promise, sir, that I shall never touch a card or roll the dice again as long as I live.”

“I believe you have learned that particular lesson, but there are other lures. I’m afraid you need to be weaned from the evil companions of your youth.”

“I will break with them, sir. All I wish to do is serve my family and my nation as a staunch and virtuous Tory. You’ll see what a paragon of good sense I shall be.”

Lord Windermere thought for a while. “I don’t know him well, but we have mutual friends. I will send you to see Sir Richard Radcliffe at the Foreign Office.”

“Thank you, sir. I won’t let you down.”

“See that you don’t.”