Viewing his brother’s exasperated expression, evoked, so it seemed, by the prospect of having to wait a few days to make a certain lady his, Harry raised a laconic brow. Everything he had heard thus far suggested that Jack was poised to take the final momentous step into parson’s mousetrap and, amazing though it seemed, he would have a smile on his face when he did so. Love, as Harry well knew, was a force powerful enough to twist men’s minds in the most unexpected ways. He just hoped it wasn’t contagious.
The sound of the knocker on the door being plied with determined force disrupted their peace.
Jack looked up.
Voices sounded in the hall, then the door opened and Toby entered. He glanced at Jack, then, noticing Harry, nodded politely. As the door shut behind him, Toby turned to Jack. “I apologize for the intrusion, but something’s come up and I’d like your opinion on the matter. But if you’re busy I can come back later.”
“No matter.” Harry made to rise. “I can leave if you’d rather speak privately.”
Jack raised a brow at Toby. “Can you speak before Harry?”
Toby hesitated for only an instant. Jack had spent all the Season at Sophie’s feet, concentrating on nothing beyond Sophie and her court. Harry Lester, on the other hand, was by reputation as much of a hellion as Jack had been and had not shared his brother’s affliction. Toby’s gaze swung to Harry. “The matter concerns a Captain Gurnard.”
Harry’s eyes narrowed. “Captain Terrence Gurnard?” The words sounded peculiarly flat and distinctly lethal. When Toby nodded, Harry settled back into his seat. “What, exactly, is that bounder up to?”
Jack waved Toby to a seat. “Have you eaten?” When Toby shook his head, his eyes going to the half-filled platters still on the table, Jack rang for Pinkerton. “You can eat while you fill us in. I take it the problem’s not urgent?”
“Not that urgent, no.”
While he fortified himself, Toby recounted his outings with Gurnard and the ultimate offer to discount his losses against an arranged clandestine meeting with Clarissa.
“So you won for the first two nights but lost heavily on the third?”
Toby nodded at Harry. “He was setting me up, wasn’t he?”
“It certainly sounds like it.”
Jack glanced at his brother. “I’ve not heard much of Gurnard—what’s the story?”
“That, I suspect, is a matter that’s exercising the minds of quite a few of the man’s creditors.” Harry took a long sip of his ale. “There are disquieting rumours doing the rounds about the dear captain. Word has it he’s virtually rolled up. Fell in with Duggan and crew. A bad lot,” Harry added in an aside to Toby. “But the last I heard, he’d been unwise enough to sit down with Melcham.”
“Melcham?” Jack tapped a fingernail against his ale mug. “So Gurnard’s very likely up to his eyebrows in debt.”
Harry nodded. “Very possibly over his head. And if Melcham holds his vowels, as seems very likely, his future doesn’t look promising.”
“Who’s Melcham?” Toby asked.
“Melcham,” Jack said, “is quite a character. His father was a gamester—ran through the family fortune, quite a considerable one as it happened, then died, leaving his son nothing but debts. The present earl, however, is cut from a different cloth than that used to fashion his sire. He set out to regain his fortune by winning it back from those who had won it from his father. Them and their kind, which is to say the sharps who prey on the susceptible. And he wins. Virtually always.”
“The sharps can’t resist the challenge,” Harry added. “They line up to be fleeced, knowing Melcham’s now worth a not-so-small fortune. The catch is that he’s also won a lot of powerful friends—and paying one’s debts is mandatory.”
“In other words,” Jack summed up, straightening in his chair, “Gurnard is in a lot of trouble. And once the news gets out, he’ll no longer be the sort of escort wise mamas view with equanimity.”
“But not yet,” Harry said. “The news hasn’t hit the clubs. That was privileged information, courtesy of some friends in the Guards.”
Jack nodded. “All right. So Gurnard has decided that the most sensible way to get himself out of the hole he has nearly buried himself in is to marry an heiress—a very wealthy heiress.”
“Clarissa?” asked Toby.
“So it appears.” Jack’s expression was as grim as Harry’s. “And time is not on his side. He’ll have to secure his heiress before his pressing concerns become public knowledge.” Jack turned to Toby. “Exactly how did he want this meeting arranged?”
Toby had started to repeat the directions Gurnard had been at pains to impress upon him when the door opened and Ned walked in. Toby broke off in midsentence. Ned’s amiable smile faded as he took in Toby’s expression and Harry’s grim face. He looked at Jack.
Jack smiled, a predatory glint in his eye. “What did Jackson say today?”
Drawing a chair up to the table, Ned dropped into it. “I have to work on my right hook. The left jab’s coming along well enough.” Ever since Jack had introduced him to Gentleman Jackson’s Boxing Saloon, Ned had been taking lessons, having uncovered a real aptitude for the sport. His eyes slid around the table once more.
“Excellent.” Jack’s gaze was distant, as if viewing some invisible vista. Then he abruptly refocused on Ned. “Strangely, I believe we may have found a use for your newly discovered talents.”