The Scandalous Life of a True Lady by Bárbara Metzger Page B

offered Seldon double or nothing, which the gudgeon accepted, and lost.
    “I cannot pay right now, but you’ll let me have the usual month, won’t you, my good man?”
    Harris was not good, not when he was on a mission. He shook his head, with its silvered hair at the temples, and pushed his tinted spectacles back up on his nose. “I have need of the brass myself.”
    “But I’ll have the blunt as soon as I return from Gorham’s house party. That affair is bound to be expensive, tricking out my doxy to compete with Gorham’s hoity-toity mistress.”
    “You are not going to Gorham’s.”
    “Of course I am. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. The wagering will be high. I’ll win back your brass, and more.”
    Harris laid a stack of gambling vouchers on the table, all with Seldon’s initials. That was another reason he was so long about this distasteful task. “I say you are not going.”
    The other man’s hand started shaking as he reached for his glass, tipping it over. Harris quickly moved the IOU’s out of danger. “I say you are returning to your country estate with your wife and children. And staying there.”
    “But, why?”
    “Because I bought these from your debtors, and because I do not like your face.”
    The baron instantly reached to the scar across his cheek.
    “Exactly.” Harris leaned closer, so only Seldon could hear his whispered threat. “If you stay in the country and act like a gentleman, I shall not call in your markers. If I ever hear—and I have ways of hearing, believe me—that you have accosted another female in your household, another unwilling woman anywhere, I shall claim everything you have that is not entailed. Everything.”
    Seldon rubbed at the ugly scar, which stood out twice as livid now that his cheeks had gone ghost white. “But how did you know? That is, I never touched the jade. Nervous female, don’t you know, one of those starched up spinsters always seeing monsters under the bed.”
    Now Mr. Harris was almost choking on the bitter taste on his tongue. “You better not be under anyone’s bed, or in it—except your wife’s, if she wants you. Is it a bargain?”
    Seldon knew he had no choice. No one would let him into any gaming hells or gentleman’s clubs, not if he couldn’t pay his debts of honor. He’d have to leave Town anyway. “You say you won’t call in the markers?”
    “Not unless you return to London. Or if you ever mention that particular lady’s name.”
    The baron stared at the vouchers, then at his opponent, wondering how the deuce the two were connected. “She’s no lady, only some half-breed educated beyond her station, putting on airs to impress my wife. As if her prunish attitude could cover all that red hair and fire.” He rubbed at the scar again. “I should have had the wench arrested instead of letting her think she was better than me.”
    Harris tucked the chits back in his pocket and stood. “She was, and is. Her father’s father holds a title; her mother’s family was French aristocracy. Even if she were a goat herder living in a shanty, an orange seller at the opera, or a whore’s daughter, you have no right to take what is not offered. Do you understand?” Since he towered over the baron, and since Harris’s shoulders were broader and his hands were clenched into fists, Seldon understood. The baron could not see Harris’s eyes through the dark lenses of his spectacles, but he knew in his heart, in his gut, in his shriveling manhood, that his life was in peril if he did not agree to the other’s terms. “I understand. My estates have been needing better supervision anyway. My wife has been complaining I do not spend enough time with her.”
    The poor woman, Harris muttered on his way out of the club.
    *
    “That poor girl,” his housekeeper started her lecture the minute he came into the Morningside Drive house by the back entrance and sat at the kitchen table. “She’s been sitting in the parlor waiting her