A Rogue to Avoid (Matchmaking for Wallflowers Book 2) Page 2

  “Oi.” A harsh voice barreled through the air.

  Gerard glanced over his shoulder, and Oggleton waved a bulky arm. The man’s muscular neck throbbed, and his face scrunched into a familiar glower.

  Perhaps Oggleton wasn’t addressing him. Perhaps his imagination had conjured Oggleton up completely.

  Gerard focused his attention on the view. Moss-covered stones hunkered along the road, and pastel blossoms rustled from the tree branches. The gelding clomped its hooves over the dirt lane, and he inhaled. Today was the pleasant sort of day he most enjoyed.

  Definitely not a day for dying.

  “Lord Rockport,” the man barked, and his baritone voice thundered over the merry chirps of warblers and robins.

  That probably was an indication Oggleton was indeed addressing him. Gerard sighed and inclined his gaze in the man’s direction.

  Oggleton narrowed his eyes, and his bushy brows snapped together like a cannon being prepared for fire.

  Gerard veered his horse toward Oggleton, but his approach didn’t lessen the man’s scowl.

  “You owe money.” Oggleton’s craggy face furrowed in an expression of such distaste, that Gerard might have believed the man had personally lent him every last tuppence.

  That hadn’t been the case.

  At all.

  Oggleton’s face darkened into a purple shade more often found on sumptuous silks from the Orient. “You were supposed to repay the duke last week.”

  “I’m sorry.” The words felt uncomfortable on Gerard’s tongue, but he forced himself to utter them.

  He was sorry. Despite everything, he was.

  He was always apologizing for his late mother’s sins and striving to keep the matter secret from his two half-brothers. He wished she’d confided in him about her debts and that he’d had the opportunity to convince her she didn’t need to go to Belmonte for coin.

  Yet it was no wonder that she had charged him with executing her will and handling her debts. She knew his opinion of her would be forever marred by that holiday in Kent.

  Gerard sighed. “I sent a note to inform His Grace that I would require the deadline to pay the loan to be extended.”

  Oggleton’s eyebrows soared upward, and he snorted. “His Grace ain’t the type to have notes change the course of justice. I gotta show you just what he’s capable of. An example for all the other debtors.”

  Oggleton removed a long carving knife from his coat, and an absurd urge to laugh filled Gerard. The metal glinted in the sunlight, and Oggleton stroked the handle which did, to give the man credit, seem to radiate luxuriousness.

  Oggleton was just the sort of man to take an interest in knives.

  “His Grace can have the money at harvest season.”

  “Four months. You must be mad.” Oggleton chuckled. “You should have repaid two days ago. That’s when the loan was due.”

  “That loan never should have been made,” Gerard said. “I only discovered it after my mother’s death. No one would have thought she had that money.”

  Oggleton hardened his gaze, and he spoke with a deliberation that Gerard imagined the man’s teachers might have appreciated. “You better not be besmirching the financial acumen of His Grace.”

  “I imagine there might be some flexibility. I’ve been in Scotland, but I was hoping to arrange a meeting with Belmonte—”

  “His Grace did not achieve his position by displaying patience.” Oggleton tilted his stocky figure closer to Gerard, and the scent of gin wafted over Gerard. “There’s a penalty for late payments. A finger for each day you’re late.”

  “That’s balderdash.”

  “So is failing to repay vast debts.”

  “I am a marquess,” Gerard announced, “And I demand you halt your absurd demands.”

  “You’re a Scottish marquess who rarely makes an appearance in London. The duke’s got you beat on respectability.” Oggleton leered and flashed jagged yellow teeth. He tapped the ivory handle of his knife. “I ain’t jesting. Now give me your hand.”

  Gerard paused. He’d heard the rumors about Oggleton. The man wasn’t the sort to bluff. He’d likely never told a joke in his life—or laughed at one. “We’re in the open. And I have a bloody reputation.”

  “No one is about.” Oggleton shrugged. “It’s a pity you favor the remoter parts of Britain. Damned unpleasant ride up here too. Quite hampering to my mood.”

  Gerard sighed. Staring at the Serpentine with all the ton beside him had never given him sufficient stimulation. And though Scotland was bloody nice this time of year—it was bloody nice any time of year, he’d leaped at his half-brother’s invitation to visit him and his new family. Now he was in England, and the duke had clearly sent someone to greet him.

  Gerard tightened his fingers around his horse’s reins. The breeze was pleasant, the sunset striking, and there was no way in all of Hades he would allow this man to dampen it.

  “Go,” Gerard roared and dug his stirrups against his horse.

  For a glorious second, Oggleton’s face crumpled.

  The horse galloped, and its hooves pounded against the tan-colored path. The wind pummeled Gerard’s attire and rippled the horse’s mane with ferocity befitting their augmented speed. Loud trotting sounded behind him, and Gerard squeezed his thighs around the beast.

  Anyone who saw him might think him a typical ton member racing his horse, albeit with a rapidity over the looping country road that verged on the inconsiderate.

  He steeled his jaw. The horse didn’t seem unduly stressed. The animal actually enjoyed galloping. Fortunately, he didn’t know one of the most notorious scoundrels in England was pursuing him.

  Gerard steered the horse toward the gray stone cottages and hilly roads of Harrogate. Perhaps the presence of other people might impede even Oggleton’s barbarity. Even Oggleton must know the duke didn’t really want Oggleton to murder him. After all, Gerard was the Marquess of Rockport. He couldn’t just have some fingers removed without consequence.

  Horse hooves thundered behind him. Gerard squelched thoughts of Lord Templeton’s death, and the mangled body the broadsheets gleefully replicated. The gap between the buildings narrowed, and stately carriages rolled over the cobbled streets. They halted before a particularly magnificent home, judging from the immaculate façade.

  Gerard scrambled off his horse and tied the gelding to a tree.

  He neared a wall and clambered over it. The moment lacked dignity. But dignity didn’t involve a scruffy man chasing him either.

  Oggleton’s reputation for destruction was pristine. He needed a place to hide, blast it.

  And where better than in public?

  Chamber music streamed from an open window, and women in lavish dresses, festooned with ribbons and lace, glided through the doors of the imposing building. Gerard doubted his buckskin breeches qualified as appropriate evening attire.

  Nevertheless, he headed toward the partygoers.

  Chapter Two

  Gerard shoved his way to the start of the queue, where an imposing white-wigged man greeted the guests. The butler’s poised expression firmed, but Gerard pushed past.

  “Sir!” A deep voice boomed behind him, summoning a force normally associated with drums leading troops into battle, and Gerard’s lips swerved upward. He’d underestimated the butler’s capability for noise.

  He ignored the plea and brushed past lassies and top hat festooned county squires. Nondescript bags, no doubt stuffed with dance slippers, dangled from bare hands. In London the hands would be gloved. This wasn’t Almack’s, no matter how much outrage the butler mustered.

  Gerard avoided balls at the best of times, a task easier at his estate in Scotland. Even the most determined hostess was flummoxed at how to achieve some semblance of a substantial guest list in that rural area. Partygoers streamed into an adjoining room. Gold letters shimmered from auburn and forest green leather tomes lined on neat shelves, and the gentlemen contorted themselves into awkward positions to exchange
their Hessians for slippers. Gerard strode over the aged floorboards, and his boots clinked a pleasant rhythm. He neared large wooden doors and thrust them open.

  The music intensified, and rows of people swayed in geometric patterns. Gerard’s foot twitched, and he lengthened his paces.

  He brushed off some of the grass and leaves that clung to his boots and grinned. He was the most underdressed man at this blasted event. Wax gleamed from the hair of most of the men. His coif was decidedly more wild, and white flecks dotted his frock coat. Apparently riding at a full gallop in the middle of spring was not without its wardrobe mishaps.

  More than one set of eyes widened at his entrance, and he didn’t bother to swallow his grin. People tended to notice when he stepped into a room, and he enjoyed the novelty of seeing disapproval flicker over their carefully powdered faces. “Sir—” A footman, one of those rosy-cheeked blond ones who seemed to be always likened to cherubs, approached him.

  “Come to welcome me?” Gerard winked.

  “No.” The lad swallowed, and his Adam’s apple hit against his ruffled cravat, the style even surpassing the old-fashioned attire found at court. He gestured vaguely toward the floor. “This is clean, sir.”

  “Splendid!” Gerard clapped his hands.

  The man’s cheeks reddened. “You’re wearing riding boots.”

  “Ah,” Gerard said. “Come to compliment them? Rather nice of you. Never was one for ruffles and silk. There’s a reason I’m never at court.”

  “You should wear—”

  Slippers.

  Gerard knew he wanted to say slippers, but he hadn’t brought his dance slippers with him. Somehow he hadn’t felt required to haul them on his post-dinner horse ride.

  He glanced in the direction of the door, half-anticipating to see Oggleton’s bulky figure barge through the crowd. The man wasn’t there, but that didn’t mean Gerard was going to wait for his appearance. Oggleton was too skilled to not be able to determine where Gerard had gone.

  “Sorry, lad.” He clapped the footman’s shoulder and wound his way through the throng of guests.

  The footman might not have succeeded in barring him from the ball, but he hoped they would do a better job at denying entry to Oggleton.

  Gerard marched deeper into the ballroom. Flames blazed in the fireplace, and he headed toward the mantel. After riding about in the cold, he wanted to get warm. Quickly.

  Black-suited footmen carried silver platters with appealingly piled food toward the banquet tables.

  Perfect.

  Gerard seized an appetizer from the tray. Perhaps he didn’t remember his father, but he would make use of the height the man had bestowed on him. The venison was splendid, and he grabbed a goblet. He favored proper whiskey to the ridiculous concoctions found at balls. There must be ten different ingredients in this one. Elderflower and thyme were both better suited to garnishing meat than spirits.

  Fleeing for one’s life rather affected his appetite and thirst.

  A footman turned to him. His features lacked the angelic appearance of the footman by the door; clearly the butler had tasked the most imposing man to oversee the food. The man’s eyes hardened, his lips cascaded down, and he tipped his nose skyward as if he found the prospect of speaking with Gerard debasing. Perhaps the man thought himself intimidating, though after spending time being chased by a knife-wielding Oggleton, Gerard fought to suppress a laugh at the man’s attempt at a grimace.

  He stuffed a second treat in his mouth and savored the gamey taste. “You should try one.”

  “I must ask you to leave.” The footman’s pale face purpled, his tray shook, and the sound of dishes clanging against silver filled the silence.

  Gerard sipped the alcoholic mixture. The bubbles might be growing on him, and he beamed, happy to be back in the warmth, safe from the finger-slashing maniac outside.

  Some guests halted their conversations, and Gerard inhaled their clashing perfumes as they thronged nearer him.

  “I doubt he was invited,” one person declared in a broad Yorkshire accent.

  “How improper,” a heavily jeweled woman murmured. “Harrogate’s status is diminishing. I’ve never discovered disheveled Scots in other ballrooms.”

  “Though the man does look familiar . . . ” a younger woman said.

  He grinned at her, noting her symmetrical features and well-placed curves. Strawberry blonde tendrils framed her face, and if he squinted he might even imagine she possessed Scottish ancestors. “I wouldna mind becoming familiar with you.”

  “Sir!” Outrage permeated the man’s voice, and the older woman grabbed the lassie’s arm and marched her away.

  Curious onlookers filled the empty space.

  “I must demand you leave.” The footman gave a pointed stare at Gerard’s cravat. “And not simply because your dress lacks the appropriate finesse.”

  To give the footman credit, the linen at his neck had rather come loose after his gallop through the fields.

  “Are men’s necks the new equivalent of ladies’ ankles?” Gerard handed the footman his empty goblet and tied the linen back into an expert knot honed from years of practice in mirrorless rooms.

  Some of the ladies blinked. He’d been recognized.

  He winked and their cheeks pinkened and some of them tittered.

  “Your attire is not suited to an event of this significance.” The footman’s sour look did not dissipate.

  Clearly this youth was of the more ambitious sort. Perhaps he had lofty dreams of being a valet one day, so he might focus his disapproval on wrinkled linens and unbrushed coats for hours.

  “Then you must apologize to the hostess for me,” Gerard replied solemnly. “Who’s home is this?”

  “A respectable man would know.”

  “Yet I am told I am respectable.”

  “He is!” One lass exclaimed, and her friends giggled.

  “I find that claim unlikely.” The footman swept his eyes downward as if itemizing each spec of mud and grass on his clothes to detail to the downstairs crowd over breakfast. “You are wearing dirt!”

  “Good Yorkshire soil,” Gerard corrected him. “For a county filled with people who claim to adore it—wholly unreasonably I always thought—you should be more grateful I brought it in.”

  “We have standards here.”

  “Ah, indeed. I must share that in London,” said solemnly. “The presence of standards in the North is always much debated in Almack’s.”

  “What would you know of Almack’s?” The footman asked.

  Gerard sighed. This man did not favor humor. “Come, come, you mustn’t look so miserable.”

  “This household should be devoid of vagrants.”

  “Vagrants,” Gerard mused. “That is not a term conventionally chosen to describe a marquess. Or to address him.”

  “You should address a marquess as my lord,” one lass offered helpfully.

  “I am not addressing a marquess, I am addressing—” The footman’s tone faltered, and he swallowed the rest of the sentence.

  Gerard stretched his lips up into the most encouraging smile he could conjure.

  The footman inhaled. “No marquess was invited. Therefore you could not be a marquess.”

  “Ah, but I am.” Gerard grabbed another drink from the silver platter and winked. “Surprise.”

  “Impossible,” the footman croaked. “You wouldn’t be—” the footman swallowed hard, “By any chance the marquess who is visiting Lord and Lady Somerville?”

  “The very same.” Gerard chuckled. “I should tell the hostess of your extreme scrutiny of the guests’ attire.”

  “I would rather—”

  “That I didn’t?” Gerard winked. “Rather less finicky now, aren’t you?”

  “Marquesses are allowed their eccentricities,” the footman said.

  Gerard sighed. “I’m not sure we should be.”

  “My lord?” The footman’s stern tone was replaced with something that rather more resemble
d fawning.

  Gerard did not think the footman’s newfound deference an improvement to the servant’s personality.

  “Never mind,” he said.

  No need to talk to the footman all about the pampering of aristocrats that had seen every dressmaker, hat maker, servant and estate manager allow his mother to go into tremendous debt. The dowager had not been a woman people could bring themselves to deny, and now Gerard had to pay for the easy indulgence of his mother’s vices.

  He glanced at his hands. Possibly he would need to pay with his fingers, and potentially with much more. “If you see a chap with a swarthy complexion and a tubby body who goes by the name of Oggleton, you’re quite free to tell him all about the merits of retaining an appropriate dress code.”

  “My lord?”

  Gerard swept his gaze to the door.

  Oggleton marched inside.

  Gerard’s throat dried, despite the copious cocktails he’d just imbibed. He directed the footman’s attention to Oggleton. “That man—that man should not be here.”

  Gerard slipped into the swarm of people. Perhaps he could remain unnoticed. He sighed, rather less grateful for his height. He towered over the other gentry. Hiding was never something he’d been destined to do.

  Men and women glided over the dance floor, forming the same intricate patterns they did in London, even if the accompanying music lacked quite the same amount of harmony as found at Almack’s.

  He wove through the dancers. Few people seemed to recognize him. This was the first time Gerard had visited Yorkshire, and at this rate, it would be his last. If he desired the countryside, he could be in the Highlands where he far favored the people’s brogues.

  Gerard glanced in Oggletons’s direction. The man hastened over the floor with a vigor that surpassed even that of a ravenous cat who’d spotted a mouse.

  He needed a dance partner.

  At once.