Regency High Society Vol 7: A Reputable Rake / The Heart's Wager / The Venetian's Mistress / The Gambler's Heart

‘Yes.’ Miss Hart turned to him again so that their faces were very close. ‘It was good of you to include me, Mr Sloane.’

‘My pleasure.’ He smiled.

The irony of his scrapping Hyde Park virago being none other than Lady Hannah’s cousin made him want to laugh out loud. He contained the impulse, but found he liked sharing the secret with Miss Hart. It felt… wickedly intimate.

When she’d emerged from her town house, he’d first only been aware of a swish of green silk, then he’d recognised her. But instead of the look of an efficient governess, she’d had a regal air, as if her intricate hairstyle were a crown upon her head.

When he had offered her his arm, the torch at the doorway illuminated her face, and he at last discovered the secret of her eyes. They were light brown—no, that was not descriptive nough—they were ginger-coloured, ginger flecked with chocolate. With the frame of her dark brows and lashes, the effect was remarkable. What’s more, her eyes shone with alertness and intelligence, as if they could not get their fill of all there was to see. For that very brief moment he’d felt caught in them, as if they also had the capacity to set a trap.

Miss Hart was a decided contrast to the classically beautiful Lady Hannah with her abundance of blonde curls, liquid blue eyes and blushing pink complexion. Lady Hannah, fashionably petite and curvaceous, was like a sweet confection, while her taller, slimmer cousin brought to mind something with more spice—ginger, perhaps.

‘Mr Sloane is seeking to buy a property in Mayfair,’ Hannah continued to her cousin. ‘Will that not be splendid?’

‘Very nice,’ Miss Hart agreed.

‘We shall be neighbours!’ Lady Hannah laughed, lightly placing her hand on his arm.

‘Mayfair is a big place,’ intoned Lord Cowdlin.

Sloane knew Cowdlin was not at all happy about any proximity between Sloane and his daughter.

Lady Cowdlin piped up, ‘Not so very big. He’d be hard pressed to be farther than a few streets from our fine residence.’ She gave a toadying smile. ‘Why, we may be certain to see him often as we are out and about.’

Lady Cowdlin undoubtedly favoured his suit, but then she was probably not privy to tales told about him in the gentlemen’s clubs and gaming hells. Still, Sloane was confident his money would wear down Cowdlin’s reservations, as would his efforts to behave in an impeccably respectable fashion.

Lady Hannah leaned into his side. ‘That will be so lovely,’ she purred.

Lady Hannah also made no secret of favouring his suit, though the increasingly proprietary flavour of her flirtation, so gratifying that very afternoon when she had sat by his side in his curricle, suddenly irked him. He’d not yet proposed to her, he wanted to protest in front of her cool, ginger-eyed cousin.

‘Do you have a property in mind, Mr Sloane?’ Miss Hart asked. It was the sort of polite question anyone might ask, but her gaze had flicked back and forth between him and her cousin.

‘I have hired a secretary to search for me. A very bright young man—’

‘Who is that, Sloane?’ Lord Cowdlin interrupted. ‘Someone known to me?’

Cowdlin probably thought he’d hired a man out of the rookery to handle his affairs. Sloane certainly knew such men, but he would be a fool indeed to mix that part of his life with his newly respectable one.

‘His name is Elliot. I doubt he would be known to you, but he is extremely efficient.’ Cowdlin would probably scowl in disapproval if he knew Elliot’s background: the son of a man who had run London’s most sophisticated smuggling operations. Now retired, he’d managed to get his son respectably educated. Working for Sloane was an opportunity for Elliot to join the respectable world. In that, he and Sloane had much in common.

‘Ah,’ responded Cowdlin without true interest.

The carriage soon drew up to the entrance of the King’s Theatre. There was a long line of carriages behind them, signalling a large crowd. Sloane assisted the ladies from the carriage, Lady Cowdlin an awkward bulk, Lady Hannah all soft and melting in his grasp, and Miss Hart a mere formality, relying on herself, not his hand, to alight.

Sloane predicted Hannah would some day be a warm and responsive bed partner; it was one of the qualities that had fostered his interest in her. But he could not imagine what sharing a bed with Miss Hart would be like. His senses flared with a sudden curiosity to find out.

Sloane mentally shook himself. He was thinking like a rake, not a gentleman. In a very gentlemanly manner, he offered each of the young ladies an arm and allowed Lord and Lady Cowdlin to precede them into the theatre and on to the box he’d rented for the Season. It had cost a pretty penny, as had the boxes he’d rented in all the important theatres. These were investments, he told himself, the necessary expenditures of a wealthy gentleman of the ton.

His investment was already paying off. Lord Cowdlin had given up his own subscription to the opera this year, more evidence of his dismal financial situation. Lady Cowdlin and her daughter had been in raptures when Sloane offered his box to them. They insisted he must be part of their group or they could not possibly accept his generosity. Lord Cowdlin had been less enthusiastic about this invitation. No doubt that gentleman would prefer to find a wealthy son-in-law who did not come encumbered with a rakehell’s reputation.

Sloane ushered Lady Cowdlin into the box. ‘My lady, I would be pleased for you to take the front seats. The view should be excellent.’

Lord Cowdlin snapped to attention. ‘What? What? You would sit in the back with my daughter?’

Sloane refrained from rolling his eyes. Did Cowdlin think him so big a fool? In such a public place, to sit in the dark with a maiden would surely compromise his efforts to raise his reputation from the depths it had sunk in the years he’d been on his own. Sloane was no fool. ‘You misunderstand me, sir. I meant the front seats for all the ladies of our party.’ He kept his voice deliberately bland. ‘I fancy you and I will be less interested than the ladies in either the performance or the audience.’

‘Oh,’ mumbled his lordship. ‘I beg your pardon.’

‘I will sit in the back, Papa.’ Lady Hannah batted her eyes. ‘I do not mind in the least.’

Apparently Lady Hannah had fewer scruples than he. Either that or she was impossibly naïve.

Sloane noticed Miss Hart watching this exchange with those lively eyes. What was she thinking? If he sat in the back with her, he could ask. He fancied she was the sort who would tell him.

Lady Cowdlin seized her husband’s arm with a dramatic flourish. ‘I will sit with my husband, Mr Sloane. You young people must sit in the front seats. I insist upon it.’

And Lady Hannah insisted that she sit in the middle chair, Miss Hart on one side, Sloane on the other, to which arrangement Miss Hart acquiesced without complaint. She took her seat and immediately scanned the theatre, somewhat methodically, Sloane noticed. She slowly examined the house left to right, eyes lingering longer on certain boxes, watching certain people on the floor.

The theatre was filling rapidly, the expensively clad patrons taking their seats in the boxes, the less fashionable packing the floor below. The din of voices melded with the orchestra tuning their instruments, creating a buzz of general anticipation.

‘Oh, look, Mr Sloane,’ Hannah cried. ‘There is Lady Castlereagh and her husband as well.’

Lord Castlereagh caught sight of Sloane as he took his seat. The gentleman acknowledged Sloane’s nod. Castlereagh was one of the few who knew of Sloane’s service during the war, when the government had needed a man to crawl around the city’s underbelly, to sniff out traitors more interested in profit than patriotism. Sloane was compensated for his deeds by a portion of the spoils seized from those who betrayed England for French gold. The bounty had been the seeds of his fortune. Skill at cards had done the rest.

He was compelled to remain silent on those years, and to endure from those who recruited him the belief he had done it only for the money. Still, when he had asked Castlereagh to use his influence with his wife, one of the patronesses of Almack’s, to issue him a voucher, the man had done so. Sloane’s mere appearance in those hallowed halls had gone a long way to giving him entrée into the ton.

Sloane had forgone serious card play and other gaming, his quest for respectability being a more challenging game. Admittance to Almack’s, however, had been like breaking a faro bank.

‘Oh, I also see one of my dearest friends from school,’ Lady Hannah exclaimed, her attention darting to the other side of the room. ‘And my brother is with her! How nice. I have high hopes in that quarter.’

Sloane dutifully glanced in that direction.

Hannah turned to her cousin. ‘Morgana, look, there is my brother Varney, and he is with Athenia Poltrop, my best bosom friend…’

Sloane no longer heeded Lady Hannah’s chatter. He no longer thought of her cousin. His vision was riveted upon another box, where the erect, silver-haired figure of the Earl of Dorton entered, followed by his son, Viscount Rawley and his Viscountess. Last entering the box was a fine-looking young man Sloane could only guess was his brother’s son.

What a friendly family party. How cosy for them all to attend the theatre together. Only one family member had been excluded from the familial tableau.

Sloane. The black sheep. The disreputable son.

He had no wish to be included in any of their activities, but one day they would not dare ignore him. One day he would have so much power and influence that his father would be forced to pay him respect.

‘Who is that, sir?’ Miss Hart’s sharp eyes were upon him, obviously noticing the direction of his gaze.

Hannah answered for him. ‘That is Lord Dorton and his son, Lord Rawley, and Lady Rawley. The young man is her son.’

‘My father and brother,’ Sloane finished for her.

Miss Hart’s eyebrows rose a notch.