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“Foolish,” Ian said, surprised to find how much effort was required to form that one-word answer.
“As you bloody well should. Whatever made you think you could go tearing off across the country—”
Ian raised his hand, its palm toward the earl, putting an end to that pointless castigation. After a moment, he let it fall to the counterpane, but his eyes held on Dare’s, which, below the outrage, were filled with concern.
“No lectures, I beg you,” Ian said.
“I’m to let you kill yourself at your leisure, I suppose.”
“Hardy a fitting argument coming from you.”
“The risks I took were always for a good cause,” Dare said. “This, however…” The earl shook his head, his expression rich with disgust.
“I trust you will at least admit I had no reason to expect a broken axle or an attack by highwaymen,” Ian said.
“It’s your sanity in undertaking the journey I question. As well as your sanity in undertaking this so-called guardianship.”
“I see Williams has been talking.”
“Everyone from the groom up has been talking, mostly about your gallant and heroic rescue of your new ward.”
The final word was full of sarcasm, and given what he had felt that night, Ian wasn’t sure it was misplaced. He ignored Dare’s tone, however, choosing to reply only to the rest of his brother’s statement.
“I fell out of the coach on top of the bastard. Hardly a gallant rescue.”
“Your admirers disagree. As I’m sure will your dear charge.”
“My dear charge, as you call her, knocked her attacker out with a well-aimed blow to the head. If anyone deserves accolades for that fiasco, it is she.”
“A well-aimed blow to the head? How charming,” the earl said sarcastically.
“She is charming. Have you met her?” Ian asked.
“Darlington’s brat.” Dare fairly spat the words. “For that coward to have foisted his daughter on you is beyond enough. He must be laughing his head off in Hell. What I can’t understand is why in the world you accepted the responsibility?”
“Those were the terms of his will. What would you have done?”
“I should have paid her fees for the next thirty years and left her in that school where Darlington had her safely hidden away.”
“She’s nineteen, Val. Nearly twenty. And she’s been in that school almost her entire life.”
“And what is that to you?”
“Nothing, I suppose,” Ian said, almost too tired to deal with his brother’s caustic tongue, even though he understood Dare had only his best interests at heart.
“You are too noble for your own good,” the earl said.
“Noble?” Ian repeated, surprised into laughter, which resulted in a prolonged fit of coughing.
After a moment, Dare got up from his chair and poured a glass of water from the pitcher on the table beside the bed. Then he sat down on the edge of the mattress and lifted his brother’s shoulders to place the rim of the tumbler against his lips. Ian drank the water gratefully and finally the coughing subsided, leaving only a burning ache in his chest to remind him of the danger of responding to his brother’s compliments in the manner he usually employed.
“You could have told the solicitor no,” Dare said, lowering him to rest again against the pillows.
“I thought she was a child. I was imagining a lonely little girl, forced to spend Christmas in a deserted boarding school.”
“And when you saw her?”
A more difficult question, Ian admitted. With a more complicated answer—especially after the events of that journey. He might admit the answer to his own conscience, but he would certainly not offer it for his brother’s consideration.
“Her headmistress suggested that it’s my responsibility to find her a suitable husband,” he said instead.
Dare’s lips pursed, and then he stood, putting the glass back on the table before he looked down on his brother again. “And how do you intend to go about that? Anyone who served with you knows what Darlington did. None of your friends will even be civil to the girl.”
“Including you?” Ian asked. “Rather Old Testament, Val.”
“Good God, you don’t anticipate that I should have to meet her, do you?”
“Like it or not, she is my ward,” Ian said simply. “You are my brother, and the head of this family. I don’t see how you should avoid meeting her.”
“I shall avoid it by the simple expedient of refusing to meet the daughter of the coward who almost cost my brother his life.”
“She doesn’t know any of that,” Ian said.
“And you don’t intend to tell her,” Dare guessed.
“Would you?”
The silence stretched a moment, and finally, Dare turned away from the bed and seated himself again in the chair. “Then what do you intend to do?” he asked. Both the sarcasm and the anger had been wiped from his voice.
“I intend to find her a suitable husband.”
“Does she have any assets that make her marriageable?”
Ian thought about the girl he had brought back from the north, picturing her in his mind’s eye. And as he did so, he attempted to divorce his unexpected and highly improper physical response from his judgment.
There was no doubt she was lovely and unspoiled. Unsophisticated as well, he acknowledged. And courageous beyond any woman he had ever known, with the possible exception of Dare’s Elizabeth. Having avoided London society for the last few years, Ian wasn’t sure, however, if any of those qualities, other than the first, would be considered an advantage there.
“Ian?” Dare prompted.
“Money, do you mean? Very little, I would imagine. The solicitor is still investigating the estate, but whatever Darlington had he usually gambled away.”
“Looks?”
“She’s…pleasant enough, I suppose,” Ian said carefully, remembering that pale face in the moonlight, framed by strands of bedraggled hair. He had thought her incredibly beautiful at that moment, but then she had just saved his life, so he supposed he could not be considered entirely unbiased. “I’m not sure what type of beauty is currently in vogue.”
“And what type does she possess?” Dare asked, his voice for the first time holding the familiar amusement with which he normally confronted the vagaries of life.
“She’s tall. And rather slender. Her hair is…auburn.” At the last second, Ian had avoided his original choice of words. As out of touch with the beau monde as he might be, even he knew that redheads had not managed to take the town by storm in his absence.
“Her eyes are fine. Very speaking,” he finished lamely, meeting the earl’s equally fine eyes, which were, without any doubt, also speaking. And Ian wasn’t entirely sure he liked what they were saying.
“Good luck,” Dare said.
“I shall need more than luck, Val. I shall need your help,” Ian said doggedly.
This was not a duty he had sought, nor one he wanted, but he could not fault the girl for her father’s sins. He knew the narrow world to which they both belonged would, however, if that story got out. It was a world whose membership was determined strictly by birth, which Anne Darlington did possess. And it seemed that might be the only attribute she could claim that would have any meaning there.
“My help to do what?” Dare asked, the amusement gone. “Surely you don’t mean my help to find her a husband?”
“To launch her into society, at least. I promised her headmistress she should have her chance.”
“You promised her headmistress,” his brother repeated disbelievingly.
“She should have her chance to make a proper marriage, one commensurate with her birth. And the only place that may be accomplished quickly, and at this late date, is in London.”
“The Season.”
“Of course,” Ian said.
“And what do you believe I can do for her there?”
Again there was silence in the room. By virtue of her own birth and title, Dare’s countess certainly belonged to the world of the haute monde. Normally it would have been under her auspices that any young woman sponsored by the Sinclair family should be brought out.
However, the Countess of Dare had forfeited her social standing in a cause as noble as the one her husband had undertaken. A cause which had cost Elizabeth her reputation. And the scandal that had erupted within the ton when Dare married her had not yet died down.
“If you are determined to embark on this venture, you may have the London house, of course,” Dare said, apparently answering his own question. “And whatever funds you have need of, if only to get her off your hands.”
“I don’t want your money,” Ian said, “but I’ll accept the offer of the town house. If you are serious.”
“I am never serious,” Dare denied, “but you are very welcome to the house. Remember, however, that by using it, you may face guilt by association. Association with Elizabeth and me,” he added, a trace of bitterness in his voice.
“I consider myself honored by that association.”
“They won’t,” Dare said bluntly.
“You have seldom cared what ‘they’ think. Why begin now?”
“Wait until next year,” the earl advised, ignoring the comment. “By then, the scandal will have died down. And perhaps…” He hesitated.
“And perhaps I won’t be such a crock,” Ian finished the unspoken thought, smiling up into his brother’s eyes, which had suddenly become far too serious to suit him.
“What can it hurt to wait?”
“Miss Darlington will be twenty by the time this Season begins. Her age will be a strike against her, of course, and if I wait another year…”
Again Dare’s lips pursed. “We could buy her a husband.”
Ian laughed, relieved to believe Dare’s good humor had been restored. “Except she has no fortune.”
“I’d be willing to dangle enough money to interest some worthy cit. Or even a needy younger son.”
“I think she should probably prefer to choose a husband for herself,” Ian said, remembering that flash of temper in Anne’s brown eyes. Speaking, indeed, he thought, amused by the memory.
Dare laughed. “Have you been talking to Elizabeth by any chance?”
“I beg your pardon.”
“My wife has some rather interesting notions about the marriage mart. You must ask her about them sometime,” Dare said, his smile lingering.
There was something in the earl’s eyes that created an unexpected frisson of envy in his younger brother, who had never before envied Dare any of the things he possessed by virtue of his earlier birth.
“I shall, if you wish,” Ian said. “Is Elizabeth with you?”
“I didn’t trust the roads.”
“I wish I had been as wise,” Ian said, and was glad when Dare was kind enough not to comment again on that ill-advised journey north.
“So you want to arrange a suitable marriage for Darlington’s brat and make it a love match,” the earl said. “Why don’t you arrange for the defeat of the French while you’re at it?”
Not a kindness, then, Ian thought, but simply an attack from the flank. “You think it’s an impossibility?”
“If her father’s actions become known. Especially since he named you as her guardian.”
“No official inquiry was ever held,” Ian said, trying to reassure himself that this would not become a cause célèbre. “An officer can’t be charged on the basis of how he should have behaved in an action. Only if he failed to obey a direct order, which was not the case. Besides, most of the men who knew about Darlington’s cowardice are either dead or are still fighting in Portugal. And perhaps the fact that I am now Anne’s guardian will quell any gossip that might reach London. At least until she has had an opportunity to make a suitable match.”
“An improbability, then,” Dare amended. “Considering that she has no fortune and nothing to recommend her beyond red hair and, I believe the phrase was, speaking eyes.”
“I didn’t say she has nothing to recommend her.”
“You didn’t have to. I’ve had enough of that sort thrown at my head through the years.”
“She isn’t ‘that sort,”’ Ian denied, with perhaps too much emotion.
He realized his mistake as soon as he saw his brother’s face. Dare knew him too well not to have noticed that unaccustomed vehemence. The earl’s head cocked slightly and one dark brow lifted in question.
“I see,” he said softly. A small twitch, quickly controlled, tugged at the corner of his lips. His tone, when he spoke again, was briskly impersonal, however. “If you are determined on this, then I shall have them make the town house ready. And you’ll need the name of a good dressmaker. I can recommend someone if you wish.”
“Of course I wish. I shall need all the help you and Elizabeth are willing to offer. And Val,” Ian added, “don’t be angry that I feel I must do this.”
“Angry with you?” Dare asked. “I am never angry with my brothers. That’s your office. But if you let anything happen to you, my noble pigheaded gallant, while you are trying to find the perfect husband for this bothersome girl, I promise you I shall strangle her and her headmistress. And then I shall seek Darlington out in Hell to have a go at him.”
“I believe you would at that,” Ian said, laughing again, despite his resolve not to let Dare provoke him.
The coughing the laughter produced this time was thankfully of shorter duration. And when it was over, he looked up to find Dare’s blue eyes focused on his face, their customary amusement again missing.
“I would go to Hell to prevent your suffering any more than you already have. And I swear, Ian, if you let this chit hurt you, she’ll be sorry Darlington ever produced her.”
“Hurt me?” Ian repeated in bewilderment. Dare could not possibly be aware of what he had felt as Anne had knelt beside him in the snow that night.
