“I beg your pardon?”

“It’s what people said at the time. I always thought it was a vicious rumor myself. He was such a nice boy.”

Maggie stared at her in dawning realization. “Do you mean…James Beresford?”

“Aye. That’s right.” Aunt Harriet looked at her as though it was Maggie who had lost her wits. “The Earl of Allendale’s son. Jim, they called him. A handsome golden lad. Such a shame he was a wrong ’un.”

Chapter Eighteen

Located on Albemarle Street in Mayfair, Grillon’s was an eminently respectable London hotel. Luxurious too, by any standard. But St. Clare hadn’t taken rooms there to enjoy such luxury. If that were the sole consideration, he’d have sooner remained at his grandfather’s house in Grosvenor Square. No. It was privacy he wanted. And privacy for which he paid a tidy sum.

The hotel’s manager, Mr. Fordyce, was the soul of discretion. He didn’t utter so much as a peep when St. Clare appeared in the dead of night, shrouded in a cloak and leaning on Enzo for support.

No doubt the man assumed he was foxed. An assumption aided by the fact that, upon reaching his rooms, St. Clare immediately sent down for two bottles of brandy.

Enzo busied himself filling a basin in the dressing room while St. Clare stripped off his linen shirt. He sucked in a sharp breath as his sleeve—stuck fast with dried blood—peeled away from his arm. Fred’s bullet had merely winged him, but that didn’t mean the wound didn’t hurt like the very devil. And it hadn’t stopped said wound from bleeding profusely.

It was no less than he deserved for behaving in such a reckless manner.

The moment he’d heard that Fred had taken Maggie away in his carriage, St. Clare had lost the remaining hold he’d had on his temper. For the second time that night, he’d seen red.

His grandfather often warned him of the dangers of his Beresford temper, both in words and with visual displays of his own poorly controlled ire. St. Clare had prided himself on his ability to manage that temper. To hold his emotions close, like a card player who never revealed his hand.

Even when he’d dueled with Fred so many weeks before, St. Clare had kept a tight leash on his emotions. He’d been cold and calculating. Never once permitting the anger—the hatred—that roiled within him to melt through the glacial exterior he’d forged for himself.

Until tonight.

“Acqua, signore.” Enzo brought a porcelain basin from the dressing room, placing it on a low table near the bed. Water sloshed over the rim. “E un panno.”

St. Clare wet the proffered cloth and used it to clean his wound, rinsing the blood away over the basin until the water was tinted red with it. “Portami una bottiglia di brandy.”