“Yes, I agree,” Long said, folding his hands together on the table and nodding. He appeared to be taking Joseph seriously.
“Westminster dismissed me without so much as inquiring why I was there to speak to him, to warn him about Montrose,” he went on.
“Which is bloody short-sighted of the man, if you ask me,” Long seemed to agree. He nodded for Joseph to go on.
“Montrose is the very devil, and he has his sights set on Westminster,” Joseph continued. “You would think the man would want to at least discuss the problem with someone who has personal experience of how Montrose operates.
“And that’s another thing,” Joseph launched into what was niggling him the most. “I am damned tired of being told that I don’t have any experience in life or being made fun of for it. I have been through more in the last six months than many men endure in a lifetime, and yet I am forever being branded as inexperienced and ignorant. I am the one fighting with everything I have to defend my family against Montrose and fighting to prevent Montrose from claiming another victim. Meanwhile, my brothers are all flitting about, cuddling with their brides and resting on their laurels while I am the last one standing to fight this war, and still living with my mother and aunt while I do it.”
Joseph ran out of steam suddenly, huffing out a breath and sinking back into his chair.
Long continued to study him with a serious, calculating look. “Do you want to know how to be treated like a man and to be given the respect you deserve?” he asked after a heavy pause.
“Yes!” Joseph said with feeling.
The corner of Long’s mouth twitched. “Don’t ever say those things you just said to me aloud ever again. It makes you look like a whining fool instead of a man.”
For the briefest flash of a moment, Joseph wanted to weep. The next few moments were spent in abject embarrassment over his outburst.
Then the barmaid showed up at their table with tea.
“I’m sorry,” he said, struggling to sit straight again and reaching for one of the cups that Long had poured as soon as the barmaid left. “I know that sounded wretched. I just…I just don’t know what to do anymore. My father spent my whole life setting rules and enforcing them rigidly, then they turned out to be nonsense, and now he’s gone. My brothers have all abandoned me without any guidance or insight…and here I am saying things that make me look like a ninny again.”
He took a long gulp of tea, then realized that sipping tea from a porcelain cup probably didn’t help his appearance of strength and masculinity at all.
“No,” Long said in a fair voice, nodding slightly. “That last bit made the first bit make sense, that’s all. You miss having guidance when you need it, and your father apparently did a shite job of preparing you for the world.”
“He did,” Joseph admitted glumly, taking another sip of tea. “I don’t want to forever make excuses for myself because of him, though. I want to be a good, stalwart man who takes care of his family and sets things right where they have been made wrong.”
“Ah!” Long said, leaning back in his own seat with a smile. He spread his arms out to the sides, as if he’d discovered the answer to all the riddles of the universe. “You want to be the man your father never was.”
Those few, simple words, delivered by a man in an expensive suit with a cheap accent, hit Joseph like a poorly constructed building collapsing. He did want to be his father, or rather, who his father should have been. He wanted to do the job that the bastard had made a mess of. He wanted to protect the people he loved, to help them be the best they could be, and to stop others from being hurt the way he had.
His thoughts flew immediately to Ellen. He wanted to be the man she deserved so that she could have the life she wanted. One kiss, and he was certain of it. She was a part of him now.
“Montrose is trying to play both sides of the deal that Westminster is in the process of closing,” Long said, shocking Joseph out of his thoughts.
“I beg your pardon?” Joseph said, nearly dropping his teacup.
“Montrose thinks he can make a fortune off of that land deal, and then turn around and make a second fortune blackmailing Westminster so that the whole thing doesn’t fall through,” Long said.
“How…how do you know that?” Joseph set his teacup down, his heart racing.
Long grinned. “Because you’re not the only one who finds that man’s actions reprehensible. He had a hand in ruining my father-in-law and causing society to turn their back on my wife and mother-in-law after his death.” His expression suddenly turned serious and deadly. “I’ve had my eye on him for years.”
As sorry as Joseph was to know Montrose had harmed Long’s wife—and as soon as the man had mentioned her, Joseph remembered hearing stories of an impoverished Lady Phoebe Darlington, who had scandalously married a low-born man of wealth—he was thrilled to discover that he and Long had the same aim.
“Then you can help me to bring him down,” he said, sitting up with sudden excitement.
Long smiled at Joseph in a way that threatened to crush every bit of the newfound confidence the man had just given him. “I might be willing to help, if I was certain Westminster is truly in danger. The duke is powerful, far more powerful than Montrose.”
“But if Montrose is able to earn enough money through whatever scheme he has going with Westminster to pay off his debts,” Joseph argued, “then he will be able to fund more and greater schemes against less protected noblemen. Like my family. If you have the ability to stop him, surely you must feel some sense of duty to your fellow man to do so.”
Long didn’t answer straight away. Instead, he just smiled at Joseph with yet another kind of smile. This one wasn’t pitying or sly. It was friendly.
“I like you, Joseph Rathborne-Paxton,” Long said. “I see a man sitting across from me, not a lad or a boy or a young man.” His eyes crinkled at their corners with humor as he teased Joseph with his own words from earlier. “I will help you, when I can.”
“When you can?” Joseph winced slightly.