Page 2 of The Wrong Rake
“I very much doubt it,” Harry said with great hauteur—or such was his intent. It came out more of a growl.
Those eyebrows rose another fraction. “I beg your pardon. I ought to have introduced myself. Simon Beaumont, one of the proprietors of Perdition.” He went on, saying something about the entertainments available, but it was lost in the roar filling Harry’s ears.
Beaumont. This was the bounder who’d trifled with his sister. The cad who’d raised her hopes with his extraordinarily particular attentions, squired her about Bath for weeks, made his intentions abundantly clear—and then insulted her at a public assembly, exposing her to the laughter and whispers of the world. He’d departed Bath the very next day, posting up to London without a fucking care for what he’d done.
“He asked me if he knew me, Harry,” Amelia had sobbed, leaning her head on his shoulder as she had used to do when they were children. “Said that he couldn’t possibly be acquainted with such a quiz!”
Harry had stroked her hair, comforted her as best he could, and silently vowed to wring Beaumont’s neck when he could catch up with him.
The memory recurred with sudden, inescapable vividness, washing away all of Harry’s well-intentioned plans to use subtlety in this matter.
“You,” Harry snarled, cutting off whatever Beaumont had been babbling about. His fists clenched, and he lunged forward a step, making Beaumont startle and fall back. “You dare to—you!”
It felt as if the room fell silent around them, although Harry was still vaguely, distantly aware of an uninterrupted hubbub. But staring at one another, their faces only a foot apart, they could have been miles away from anyone. Everything stopped. Only Beaumont’s wide, startled dark eyes and parted lips existed, the puff of his breath, the sudden tension in the set of his shoulders.
“I beg your pardon yet again, sir, but I fail to underst—”
“You very well ought to beg my pardon, you bastard!”
“What?”
Beaumont’s genuine shock only fed the flames of Harry’s rage. This—worthless, debauched adventurer, who probably left a trail of ruined reputations in his wake, could pretend to be surprised when named for what he was?
He recalled that he had meant to get Beaumont alone. To handle this affair discreetly and privately.
But the recollection couldn’t penetrate his growing fury. His heart hammered, his lungs constricted.
“Henry Standish,” Harry said through clenched teeth. “Miss Amelia Standish’s brother. Although I suppose you’ll pretend not to recognize the name of the woman you ruined?”
For a moment Beaumont stood frozen, as if turned to stone. And then his eyes widened even further, deep, black pools that seemed to suck Harry in and down. Damn the man for having such a face as that, fascinating even as Harry fought the urge to flatten it with his fist.
“The woman I ruined,” he said slowly. “The woman I—Mr. Standish, you are entirely mistaken. I don’t know how your error occurred, but I assure you—”
“You’re a damned liar!”
The words burst out of him with force, rising in volume and drowning out the surrounding noise.
And then the chatter around them did abruptly cease, startling Harry out of his haze of anger. He glanced about him, cursing his own temper, as two groups of gentlemen at nearby tables stopped their play and turned in unison to stare.
“You have two choices,” Beaumont hissed low enough for only Harry’s ears. “I can take umbrage at the gross insult you have just offered me and have the servants toss you down the stairs. Or you may say something apologetic, sufficiently loudly for those gentlemen to overhear, and you and I will retire somewhere more private to continue this conversation.”
Apologetic. Harry’s very soul revolted at the thought, but—bloody hell, he’d brought this on himself with his impulsivity and lack of control. Somewhere private. What he had intended in the first place, rather than bandying his sister’s name about in the hearing of others in a fucking gaming hell! And Beaumont, offering to overlook the insult and hear him out…fury well-nigh choked him.
Damn it all. He could swallow the humiliation of apologizing in public. As soon as he had Beaumont alone, he could say—and do—what he wished.
Teeth gritting and the tips of his ears burning, he said, “I doubt you and all your servants could accomplish it.” And then he added, a little more loudly, “A misunderstanding, Beaumont. I regret my choice of words.”
“Think nothing of it.” If Beaumont’s voice was rather tight, Harry could hardly blame him—for that, at least. “Come and have a drink, will you?”
Harry’s gaze flicked back to Beaumont, whose lips had curved into a pleasant smile, natural enough to fool anyone not near enough to see the unpleasant glitter in those black eyes.
“Of course,” Harry said through numb lips, and didn’t resist as Beaumont took his arm, though his flesh crawled at the contact.
Beaumont led him out of the parlor, through the hall, and up the stairs, and then down a short stretch of corridor, at last opening a plain door and ushering him into what appeared to be his office. A broad desk, with a chair behind it and another before it, a narrow window, a small fireplace with a few embers smoldering in it, and several shelves and cabinets against the walls.
Beaumont let go of Harry’s arm to cross to the side of the room and set the candelabrum he’d taken from the hall on top of a cabinet.
The lingering heat of the man’s touch could have been one of those fireplace’s embers shoved against Harry’s skin. Beaumont had touched Amelia with that hand—not in any untoward way, despite the gossip, but helping her down from his phaeton, or dancing, or walking with her in the pump room.
