“I believe you know what I mean.”

St. Clare leaned back in his chair. “As you see, I have survived the encounter without a scratch.”

“Have you?” Allendale’s mouth tightened. “I was given to understand that the pistol ball singed your shirtsleeve.”

St. Clare inwardly cursed Jessup. There was a reason his grandfather often referred to the elderly butler as Argus. Just like the mythical giant, Jessup seemed to have a hundred eyes. “A trifling thing,” he said stiffly.

“And what of your opponent? This Somerset heir to a baronetcy. How did he fare?”

“Better than he deserved.”

Allendale fixed him with a long look. “You got him through the shoulder, did you? Which shoulder? The right?”

St. Clare gave a curt nod.

“And with which hand does this fellow wield his weapons?”

A slow smile edged St. Clare’s mouth. “Up until this morning, his right one.”

“That pleases you, does it? Tell me, my boy, what was it that this squire, or whatever in blazes he is, did to earn your notice? Cheat at cards?”

St. Clare shrugged one shoulder. “He might have done.”

“And I suppose you realized that, when you hinted at that fact in the middle of a crowded gaming hell, he might be provoked into calling you out?” Allendale didn’t wait for an answer. “Well, you’ve paid this country nobody back quite handsomely for whatever small offense he’s given. For the next month, he’ll be hard pressed to raise his spoon for soup let alone his pistol or his reins and whip. Are you satisfied now? Indeed, I hope you are, sir, for you’ve fought your first and last duel in England.”

St. Clare met his grandfather’s burst of ire with silence. The same silence with which he’d endured the earl’s explosions of temper many times before.

“One month! That’s how long we’ve been back. Have you no self-control, man? No sense of purpose? What were you doing in a blasted gaming hell in the first place?” Allendale’s face reddened with anger. “Do you think I’ve wasted all of these years with you so that you could go the way of your father? The Earls of Allendale have descended in an unbroken line for over two hundred years! Straight down from Ivo Beresford himself! Do you imagine I’ll allow that line to be broken? That I’ll allow the title to pass to that idiot son of my second cousin? I tell you, sir, I will see us both damned first!”

St. Clare poured out a cup of coffee, and without a word, pushed it across the table to his grandfather.