"My lord?"
Toad had collapsed onto a loveseat as soon as Haverford took his leave. How long he sat, he had no idea. Staring into the fire, wondering what had just happened, he didn't quite hear Blakeley in the doorway. He didn't really notice the man until he was at Toad's shoulder, holding out a tray with a filled glass and decanter. Toad looked up at him blankly.
Piero slid into the seat next to Toad on the sofa. "Have a drink, Abersham." He plucked the glass off the tray and pressed it into Toad's hand. Of course, they had both stayed in hearing distance of the devastating storm that had just blown through Toad's study and swept his hopes and dreams away.
"I have behaved like a fool and a cad—both of you know that—"
"Yes, my lord."
Toad glared up at Blakeley. "You needn't be so quick to agree."
With a subtle smirk, Blakeley left the tray on the table and left.
"Surely, Piero, I am no worse than other men of my rank and age?"
"You are certainly no worse than I," Piero said. "Worse being a relative term, of course. And you have not touched a woman since you left Linette."
"I am no worse than Haverford himself! Or my father, for that matter. I have had dalliances, to be sure, but I have never crossed the line into the worst debaucheries. I have been invited; of course, I have. I am an English marquess in Paris, and the French believe us all degenerates. But I have never even set foot in a French brothel. What can he have heard, Piero?"
"I do not know, but he has heard it of all of us."
"Who hates me enough to tell such lies? Not Blakeley, surely. He has spied on me for my father, but..."
"Not Blakeley," Piero agreed. "Linette?"
They tried a couple of other names: people their team had defeated at school, women Toad had seduced or, more recently, refused to seduce, husbands and lovers; they tossed out conjecture for the length of a calming glass of brandy, but when Toad heard the door open behind him, he said, "You may as well remove yourself from the premises, Blakeley. I will not pay my father's spy for him. Especially not now."
The last thing he could afford was word of the plans he was about to make finding their way back to his father.
The manservant stepped into the room. "My lord, I believe it my duty to remain until you have set a course. I have been compensated handsomely these past years, and will be pleased to provide what service I may until we part company." Clearing his throat, he added, "Though, as I have been informed by courier I am no longer in the employ of the duke, you may be sure your activities will not 'wing their way to your father by pigeon post.'"
"Well, there is something, anyway."
"I plan to return to London when you leave France. Should you need any messages delivered, outside your normal channels, I would be pleased to oblige."
Toad stood. "Thank you, Blakeley. We shall see. Please bring us two more bottles of brandy."
"May I suggest something to eat?"
"No. The brandy will be sufficient, thank you." Heaven forfend he be made less drunk more slowly.
"I will have something to eat, if you please." Piero sat back and crossed his legs at the ankle, hands behind his head. "I started my drinking as soon as Abersham wanted to, while Haverford was still here." When Blakeley handed him the decanter, Piero asked, "So, what will you do about Haverford? Once you are finished making yourself stupid, I mean."
"I don't wish to talk about it, d'Alvieri. At the moment, I wish to get drunk as blazes."
Piero poured two more glasses of brandy and placed the stopper back in the crystal carafe. "I shall be delighted to assist in any manner you require."
Blakeley came in with two bottles and put them down within reach before backing out of the room. One thing seemed to be in Toad's favor today: Blakeley clearly realized the precariousness of his position.
Piero watched him go, then smirked at Toad. "It is clear why you are polluting yourself, of course, but do you not wish to know why I came to see you today? I have reasons of my own to drink the day away, much more pleasant than yours."
Toad drank down the liquor in his glass, and Piero refilled it. "First," Toad pronounced, quite possibly slurring his words, glass held high, "a toast. "
Piero quirked a brow.
"The rapid demise of the Dukes of Wellbridge and Haverford." Toad lifted his glass and took a gulp, without waiting for the brandy to warm.
"Indeed?" Piero raised his left brow to meet the right. "Am I to serve as your second?"
"Sadly, no. And I am not certain one can challenge one's own father for disownment. There must be a stricture against patricide in the laws of primogeniture."
"If not the Bible." Piero shrugged. "I am Italian and a nobleman. I can challenge any man for anything I like. He is, however, your father, and he does outrank you. And it will be easier to claim your Sally if you are not hanged for murder of a duke. Or two, as the case may be."
Another gulp. Toad hissed his response through his teeth. "Yes."
The growl worked its way up from Toad's gut and exploded into the room, startling Toad as much as Piero. "I've done all my parents could ask, even more than Aunt Eleanor asked!" He put down his glass, so he didn't spill it while he punctuated his complaints with a waved fist. "I've worked my fingers to the bone to provide for Sally, and he bloody well turned me down like I was a pirate asking to put her up for sale at auction. The man is intolerable."
"You've said this before. What is different now?" Piero leaned back into the soft cushions of the sofa and crossed his legs at the ankle.
"Now, I know I cannot ever rely on his support. There is value is understanding which doors are closed."
"Yes."
Seething, Toad drained his glass and poured another. "I will do exactly what I told him I would three years ago, and honor the promise I made to Sally. I will go to London to collect her and run away together, bloody dukes be damned."
Piero nodded, twisting the glass in his hand. "They have left you no choice."
"Exactly so."
"Arturo will be driven to the same end, I imagine. He shows signs of breaking under the strain, last we spoke of Chiara."
Toad was mildly distracted by a sense of fellow-feeling. At least he was not the only person in the world whose beloved was kept from him by cruel and malicious relations. "Why has he not done so already?"
Piero shrugged, arms widespread, and a little brandy slopped over the lip of his glass. "He has nowhere to take her where her brother cannot find them. He cannot simply leave his estates to govern themselves while he disappears with his love. And I do not wish to inherit, if her brother reacts as either of us would if someone stole Maddalena."
Toad nodded. "I am similarly hobbled. Even if I had access to my properties, if I inhabit any of them, Haverford will assuredly come looking for his daughter, and happily put a bullet in me. I need somewhere he won't think to look for us, until we are ready to make ourselves known. I would take her aboard ship and sail away from them all, but that is no life for Sally, no matter how romantic my mother makes it sound. I wish domestic bliss for a time, before my wife and I decide what adventures we care to pursue."
Piero reached for the bottle. "As it happens, Abersham, you self-centered horse's arse, I came today to share my good tidings, which may yet become yours."
Toad kicked off his boots and untied his cravat. "Yes? If you can improve upon this day by even an iota, I shall give you everything I own. Which is not much, you understand, given I am now only a ducal heir, not a son with an allowance, but perhaps it will keep you in brandy for a week or so."
"Your father is precipitous. He will rethink himself. And your mother... well, your mother does not strike me as a woman who will countenance such behavior in her husband or her son, so I would not be at all surprised to see him marched back in here with her hatpin at his back, with four kinds of apology on his lips." Piero put up a hand to stop Toad when he would have jeered. "And, in defense of Blakeley, while we were eavesdropping in the sitting room, he was enormously incensed by Haverford's diatribe, and would have stormed into the conversation, had I allowed it. But I assure you; he was livid. He said he considered himself the marquess's man now, and he was infuriated to hear a fine young man so infamously maligned."
"He did?" The marquess's man, eh? Perhaps he wouldn't dismiss Blakeley today after all. Toad leaned back in his seat. It wasn't much of a comfort, but some.
"Just so."
"Well, then. That is not disagreeable." But it didn't solve Toad's most immediate problem. He had nowhere to keep a servant, let alone a wife, where Haverford couldn't track him down and make Sally a widow. "What is your news, before I must consider the blasted dukes once more."
Piero was peering through his brandy again, but Toad knew he was not nearly as drunk as he pretended. Toad had drunk twice as much in half the time. "Arturo has come to Paris for the ceremonies."
"Yes, he wrote to say he would."
"He has given me a gift of sorts. He's released my estate to me six months early. I can take possession as soon as I make my way to Florence."
Toad saluted Piero with his glass. "Excellent! I did tell you he was softening."
"Yes. But also..."
"Yes?"
Another expansive Italian gesture. "The estate includes three guesthouses and a dower house."
Toad sat up straight.
"Precisely so." Piero's smile was beatific. "You need a place to bring your Sally where she will be well-concealed from her father, and where you will have no concern for her safety while we are away at sea. Haverford does not know me but for half a glance an hour ago, nor anyone from my family, and if he were to find the d'Alvieris, he will go to the castello, and Arturo will send him away. I have dozens of cousins who will be pleased to act as her companion in exchange for room and board, and the manor is close enough to the castello for the girls to visit. And you know my mother will embrace your wife as a daughter."
Toad bounced up out of his chair. "You would do that? You would give us a place to live?"
"Do not be ridiculous. Of course I will. You did not have to give me a part in the shipping line, but you did so without hesitation. Why would I not do the same?"
Toad shoulders slumped. "But... room and board. I have some money, but most is tied up in Delphinus Shipping. I told Uncle Haverford I could support her—and I can. I can—but without an allowance from the duchy, it will not be in the manner to which she is accustomed. Perhaps she will not want to be married to a poor man. I am, essentially, only a laborer now." How could he ask the toast of London to live in an Italian hovel?
But Piero was having none of his objections. "Good God, man! You are Managing Agent for one shipping line, heir to the largest such concern in England, a baron in your own right, and first in succession to a dukedom. Stop whinging and get on with it. If nothing else, Arturo will never let your wife starve, and the dower house is not a ramshackle hut. It is a perfectly respectable solution to your problem... except the elopement of course. That is not respectable..." He drained his brandy glass, and looked mournfully into it for a moment, then smiled. "But in Italia, it will not matter, for you are madly in love. You may sit here thinking of ways this will not work, or you can go to the docks and secure passage on the next available transport to England. We have three months until we must be in Greece, so go get your Sally and take her to Scotland without delay."
It sounded wonderful. Toad drained his own glass, and stood as if to start packing immediately. "Are you certain it will be—I would hate to bring her somewhere unworthy of her. You have not seen your estate in more than three years, and no one has been living there but a caretaker."
"You are a bloody nuisance, Abersham. Do you know that? If you must, you may travel back to Florence with us when we leave, to ensure the place is up to the standards of your young lady. You may choose any of the available houses, and I will have the estate's peasants clean the place and make repairs while you retrieve Lady Sarah. But you are only delaying your own wedded bliss."
Toad nodded decisively. "But it is the wise thing to do, is it not? It is not what a husband would do to prepare for a wife; ensure her safety, security, and comfort before he uproots her from her family? Does he not put her wellbeing above his own impatience? I cannot breathe for want of Lady Sarah, but she does not deserve a chaotic marriage on top of what will assuredly be a slapdash wedding. I daresay we can both endure a few more weeks, to bring Sally to a good home she can call her own. I will send a letter to explain why I am asking her to wait, and be back in England within the month. "
Piero rolled his eyes. "As though I would offer to put your bride up in a shack. But if you must convince yourself of the suitability, I will have Arturo arrange passage on the steamship for you. We leave in three days."