Her Wicked Proposal novel Chapter 64

Two hours had passed by the time Charles had drunk himself beneath a card table.

"Looks like you need a hand, Lonsdale." James Fordyce, the Earl of Pembroke reached under the table and offered a hand to him. Charles gripped the hand and allowed himself to be hauled up on his feet. His vision cart-wheeled and he blinked rapidly, trying to get a steady fix on the man's face.

"Ready to go home, Lonsdale?" Pembroke asked.

"Suppose I ought to. Bloody hell, what a night."

Pembroke slid one arm around Charles's waist, supporting him outside to hail a hackney to get him home. Linley emerged from the shadows of a nearby mew and joined Pembroke in supporting Charles by ducking under Charles's left arm.

"There you are, lad," Charles greeted the boy.

Linley's disapproving scowl cut across him as the boy spoke to Pembroke. "How deep into his cups did he get tonight?"

Charles's friend laughed. "Enough to swim to France, I imagine, but he'll be fine on the morrow."

"You know, Pembroke, you're a good sort...good fellow," Charles mumbled.

Pembroke laughed. "Thank you, Lonsdale. You're not too bad yourself."

"No, I'm not, I'm a damned fool and a coward." Charles's words slurred as he stumbled over an uneven cobblestone. Pembroke lifted him up a little, and Charles's stomach roiled violently, but Linley helped catch him before he fell face down on the street.

Pembroke hailed a waiting hackney and assisted Linley with getting Charles inside, gave the driver his address and slipped the driver a handful of coins. As the hackney jerked forward, Charles slumped back against the seat, fighting off a wave of nausea.

"Won't be long before we're home, my lord. Then you can sleep it off."

It didn't surprise Charles that Linley knew exactly how unwell he felt. The boy had a talent for knowing what his master was feeling. He hoped the lad hadn't been too embarrassed by whatever had transpired at the club. He hadn't meant to upset the boy.

Charles was barely coherent by the time the hackney stopped in front of his townhouse. The driver hauled him to the door, muttering all the while about drunken louts.

"My lord, are you able to walk?" Linley's voice cut through the heavy fog of Charles's inebriation.

"Ah." He winced as the world spun around him when he attempted to put his feet one in front of the other. "Linley, be a good lad, make the floor stop moving, will you?"

He thought he heard a little chortle from his servant before a polite reply came out. "Of course, my lord, shouldn't be too hard to accomplish that."

Charles's legs gave out at the bottom step of the stairs and he sank to the ground, chuckling a little.

Jonathan St. Laurent fingered the two folded sheets of a letter and the blob of melted wax he'd broken. Ashton's instructions had been written in a code the League had invented years ago, one he'd only become privy to when Godric had asked him to join their ranks last September.

It was an honor he would never forget. So many years he'd watched his half brother and the other lords from a distance. Now he was one of them, no longer a valet, not from below stairs or the wrong side of the blankets, but a true legitimate son of a duke, even if his mother had been a lady's maid to the duchess. His father had married Jonathan's mother legally, albeit secretly, after Godric's mother had died in childbirth, along with a sibling Godric would never have the chance to know.

Learning of his birthright had changed Jonathan. Many young men at his age would have been demanding their inheritance and spending all of their time gambling and wenching, living life to excess. Not so for him. The temptation had been there at first...but those desires had quickly faded. There had been too much at stake. Emily Parr, Godric's wife, had been in grave danger. The League had rallied together to save her. Jonathan had joined them, and the foolish need to act out with his new money and power had nearly vanished overnight. In its place, a desire to protect those he cared about had become his priority.

That was how he'd ended up outside a dockside pub called the Devil's Eye, running a secret mission for Ashton. The baron had his fingertips in nearly every major bit of business in London, but his primary ones involved shipping. The Lennox lines were a sturdy fleet of merchant ships that Ashton had recently expanded by acquiring a competitor's business. Ashton's letter had mentioned possible activity connected to Hugo Waverly on a docked ship called the Maiden Fair. Jonathan was to track any sailors who came ashore and eavesdrop on their conversations.

Ashton's letter had mentioned that Waverly was seen visiting this vessel, rumored to be connected to the underground slave trade. Given what the League had told him about this man, it seemed the kind of disreputable affair he'd be involved in.

The door to the tavern crashed open and three drunken louts in sailor togs stumbled in, laughing and shoving one another. Jonathan stepped into the shadows and stole a mug from a passing barmaid's tray. Rather than scold him, she halted, her lips forming a kissable moue shape. An invitation. One he would have gladly accepted before last Christmas. But no, he still had the taste of a certain little young lady on his lips. A lady who had made her interest in him abundantly clear.

"I finish my shift in an hour," the maid said, looking hopeful.

"Alas, I cannot. But it flatters me, for you are quite lovely." He captured her free hand and pressed a kiss to her skin, slipping her a coin for the drink he'd taken.

Damn! He wanted so badly to bed a woman, but after Audrey Sheridan's reckless abandon toward him, he could imagine no other. If he wished to have a lady like Audrey be his wife, he could no longer chase skirts in taverns. The one thing he'd learned from his brother and Lucien in the last few months was that loyalty to one's wife was not only expected, but desired.