A Perfect Gentleman by Bárbara Metzger Read Free Book Online

card tables. Once he had given up wagering for a living, games of chance did not interest him at all. Instead he walked around, a drink in his hand, chatting with various friends and acquaintances, laughing over Charlie’s plunge into parson’s mousetrap, the way bachelors were wont to do, as if their own time would never come.
    Every once in a while, he asked one or another gentleman if he knew anything about the Chansford residence on Sloane Street. With Lady Augusta gone, he said, he was wondering if the place was for sale or to let, for those cousins of Gwen’s.
    He found out about three other houses recently come on the market, the names of two reputable land agents, one shabster to avoid, and the address of Lady Augusta’s man of affairs. Other than that, not much information was to be had.
    One of the cardplayers, Godfrey Blanchard, did guess that the niece must have inherited the place.
    Stony sipped at his drink. “Oh? I never met any of Lady Augusta’s nieces. I thought I knew most of the young females in Town.”
    Blanchard laughed as he waited for the next hand to be dealt. “I don’t know about any others, but you sure as Hades wouldn’t have known this one. Lady Augusta kept the chit as close as bark on a tree. Afraid of the likes of you and me, I suppose.”
    Blanchard’s pockets were emptier than Stony’s. The only reason he managed to remain in Town was that his family would rather pay to keep him there than have him at home. He tossed some chips across the table and said, “I think the chit’s hand was already promised to someone, anyway. At least that’s what the old cheeseparer’s housekeeper told my landlady, explaining why she wasn’t giving the girl a proper presentation. Too cheap, more likely, to foot the expense.”
    “Any idea who the lucky chap might be?”
    Blanchard shrugged. “Never heard. At any rate, the old lady grew too sickly to take the gal around much. Then she stuck her spoon in the wall.”
    “I heard there was some question about that, too.” One of the other men at the table answered as he shuffled the deck. “The magistrate looked into it, as I recall. But he decided that since Lady Augusta was ailing, it did not matter if she hit her head and her heart stopped, or if she hit her head because her heart gave out. No one cared much either way, I suppose.”
    “The niece must have cared.”
    The dealer did not answer, and Blanchard shrugged again and turned his attention to his new cards. If an heiress was out of bounds or out of reach, she was of no interest to him. A good hand was.
    Stony waited through the deal to see if anyone remembered anything further. When the play paused again, he started to leave, but Blanchard called him back. “Hold a minute, Wellstone. All this interest in the house and the heiress… You haven’t heard anything I should know, have you?”
    Stony was not about to toss Miss Kane to the wolves, no matter what he felt about the woman. Blanchard and his oily ilk were too hungry, too quick to slaver over a tender morsel. They were just the kind of scoundrels Stony steered away from the young misses in his care, when he had young lambs—ladies—to shepherd about. He waved a casual farewell. “No, nothing you should know, I am sure, Blanchard. It was just something I recently read.”
    *
    Gwen learned nothing Stony did not already know, to her chagrin. Stony’s valet was nearly as unhelpful. A closemouthed household was the Sloane Street residence, he reported, with mostly female servants, as befitted a single gentlewoman’s establishment. Most had found new employment since the mistress’s demise. There was no valet for Stony’s man to chat with, naturally, and the old butler was said to be an odd chap who kept to himself since Lady Augusta’s passing. He should have been pensioned off, the neighboring servants all agreed, resentful on his—and their futures’—behalf. But old Lady Lickpenny must have died the way she lived,