Chapter 2

Vander blinked at his father, waiting for him to burst into his signature nasal chuckle, the one he used whenever someone suggested he do something completely ridiculous, like employ the Woodhousian Method of Graduation with regard to mortality tables.

It took him a good ten seconds to realize that his father wasn't joking.

Vander found he had risen halfway out of his seat. He forced himself to settle back down. "Don't… Don't be absurd! You can't leave the company to Milton!"

"I can, and I will!"

"Did we not just establish that Milton cannot add?" Vander raked a hand through his raven-black hair. "How in seven hells is he supposed to run an insurance company?"

"At least Milton will show up!" his father shot back. "Believe me, I would rather leave it to you. You're my son, and if you would but apply yourself, you are more than capable of running this company." He stood, placing both hands on the desk and leaning forward. "But right now, not only are you failing to apply yourself, you are actively driving Beauclerk Marine Casualty toward bankruptcy!"

Vander gave his father a sour look. "First you accuse me of failing to show up—which is fair. Then in your next breath, you say I'm somehow driving the company toward bankruptcy. Which is it, Father?"

His father's voice shook with feeling. "If you think it is a trivial matter that all the world now knows that the man who will one day take over Beauclerk Marine Casualty is a dissolute wastrel, then you are very much mistaken."

Vander shrugged a negligent shoulder. "I'm not the head of Beauclerk Marine Casualty. So long as you're here, business will be fine."

"Balderdash!" his father cried, slapping both hands down upon the desk. "Business is not fine! Every day since this confounded column came out, I have had clients come into my office, seeking reassurance that Beauclerk Marine Casualty is not in danger. We sell insurance, and the entire point of insurance is that it must be steady. When our clients are having a disaster, we must be there for them, as solid as a rock. Our clients do not buy a policy that lasts for one day; they buy one that lasts for the entire length of their ship's voyage. If our clients believe that the business will founder the second you take over, the question that follows is whether Beauclerk Marine Casualty will be able to honor its financial obligations."

It was a fair argument, and Vander didn't have a ready retort. "Well… it's a moot point because you're in excellent health. You'll be around for another forty years."

"Life is uncertain, Evander, which anyone purchasing insurance understands all too well." His father began to pace the room. "As insurers, our duty to our clients is a sacred one. After all, who is it that we turn to on the worst days of our lives?" He spun around, raising a finger for emphasis. "To our insurers!"

"Oh, my God," Vander muttered, sinking down in his chair. He recognized the opening lines of his father's speech about the virtues of insurance.

He knew from experience that the torture would last for at least ten minutes. Settling back in his chair, he allowed his thoughts to drift.

When he blinked out of his stupor some minutes later, he saw that his father had whipped himself into a frenzy. "What is the balm that greases the skids of the economy? Insurance! What allows us to rest easy as we lay on our pillows at night? Insurance! Why is it that men dare to cross oceans?" He spun around, shaking his fist at the ceiling. "Because they have insurance!"

Vander cleared his throat. "Yes, yes. Insurance. The root of every virtue. But what does this have to do with me?"

His father sank into the plain wooden chair behind his desk. "Because of the exceptionally cold winter, the sailing season to India is just getting underway. A disproportionate number of ship owners are therefore looking for insurers to underwrite their voyages right now. They will either choose Beauclerk Marine Casualty, as many of them have in years past, or they will take their business elsewhere. It is therefore imperative that we take immediate steps to demonstrate the stability of the company. There are two possible ways we can do this. The first involves you marrying a respectable woman and abandoning your life of carnality and vice."

The anger abruptly went out of his father. His shoulders sagged, and his eyes looked tired. "And the second option involves me publicly stating that you will have nothing to do with the running of Beauclerk Marine Casualty, now, or in the future."

Vander sighed. He knew full well he had always been a disappointment to his father. He may have inherited his father's brains, but at heart, he was like his mother, the adventuresome spirit who had agreed to marry a man she had known for all of three weeks and cross an ocean, leaving behind her family, her homeland of India, and the only life she had ever known.

"No more scandals," his father continued. "You will marry a respectable woman by month's end. And you will begin coming into the offices so you can learn the business. Those are my terms."

Vander rose. "And I will consider them."

His father squinted at him. "Consider them? What do you mean, consider them? What choice do you have?"

Vander was already striding out the door. "You'll see."

Once he was alone in the hallway, he allowed himself to slump against the wall. If he was being honest with himself, his life had been going to hell in a handbasket even prior to his father's pronouncement.

And it was all the fault of his best friend, David.

David Daughtry was better known by his courtesy title, Viscount Trundley, as he was heir to the Earl of Baldridge. He and Vander had been inseparable from the moment they met at Eton. In David, Vander had found a true kindred spirit, someone who believed that life should be a lark and didn't take things too seriously. For the past sixteen years, David had been the companion Vander preferred above all others, and the feeling had been mutual.

Until last month.

Her name was Miss Emily Arbuthnot, and she was the particular friend of David's little sister, Letty. Emily Arbuthnot had blue eyes and a mass of curly blonde hair. She was of middling height and average figure, and she cloaked that average figure in the shroud of muslin favored by respectable unmarried misses. Her interests, from what Vander could tell, primarily consisted of reading lurid novels. The few times Vander had encountered her, she had spent most of their conversation speaking with great enthusiasm about whatever far-fetched Gothic tale she had just finished.

She was not, in summary, the type of woman David and Vander liked. They liked sophisticated women. Seductive women. Women clad in crimson silk, not pale pink muslin. Women who whispered wicked suggestions in your ear, not prim, virginal misses who bored you by recounting the entire plot of The Sepulchral Summons, whatever the hell that was.

And yet… David liked her! He liked her so well that, as utterly incomprehensible as it seemed to Vander, he had gone and proposed.

Now all David could talk about was Emily this and Emily that, and that was on the increasingly rare occasions Vander even got to see him. Half the time Vander suggested they go to Gentleman Jackson's to box a few rounds, David already had plans to call upon Emily or to take her to The Temple of the Muses, the largest bookshop in London.

And what was worse, suddenly all of their usual haunts were deemed unseemly for a man about to be married. Houses of ill repute were completely out of the question. If they so much as went to the theater, David wanted to sit next to Emily in her parents' box, not down in the pit where courtesans prowled, looking for a new protector, and there was the potential for something interesting to happen.

David even refused to even cross the threshold of their favorite gaming hell as there were "too many loose women" roaming about—which had previously been at least half the point.

Vander had confronted David. If they couldn't go to any of their usual spots, when was he supposed to see him?

David had proceeded to shock him by confessing that for him, their old haunts had been growing stale for some time. "We must've gone to Boodle's to gamble and get drunk a hundred times."

This was, of course, incorrect. During the Season, they had been going around twice a week for the past six years, which would make their number of visits closer to three hundred.

Vander didn't say this aloud, of course. That was the sort of thing a quiz would say.

"The first few times we went, it was exciting," David had continued. "But now, on the hundredth visit? It just feels dull. Do you mean to tell me you're not tired of it, too?"

David did have a point. Vander couldn't deny that their usual antics were no longer as exciting as they once had been.

But David was approaching this problem from entirely the wrong direction. The answer wasn't to marry and settle down. It was to find even more dissolute entertainments, and even more daring women to take as their lovers.

Hence Vander's quest in the last six months to find a woman who could hold his interest. It had not proved to be Mary Louise Huntley, Marguerite Cadieux, Eliza Mernock, or any of the others.

But she was out there. He felt sure of it.

But David didn't see it that way. The man was actually excited about marrying Emily and starting a family! He had been spending more time with his father, discussing the workings of the estate he would one day inherit, and he had recently decided to run for a seat in the House of Commons.

He had even begun reading the Farmer's Magazine. Vander didn't know who his best friend was anymore.

He had already been feeling adrift, and now his father sprang this nonsense about marrying on him. Well, Vander wasn't ready to throw in the towel just yet. It was possible that he would have no choice but to capitulate to his father's demands, so logic dictated that he start looking for a suitable bride, just in case.

But if he could find a way to support himself, he could thumb his nose at his father and continue living as he damn well pleased.

Sighing, Vander made his way downstairs. He nodded grimly to the butler as he accepted his hat and gloves when a voice interrupted his whirling thoughts. "Vander? Is that you, azizam?"

He looked up. "Maman."

His mother was descending the stairs. The passage of thirty years may have left faint creases at the corners of her eyes and a trace of grey in her dark mane, but it had not dimmed the beauty that had caused his square, prudent-to-a-fault father to take one look at the woman who now bore the name Azita Beauclerk and fall head-over-heels in love.

His father had sailed for India to better understand the voyage many of the ships covered by his budding insurance company would undertake. He had planned to come back with information that would help him make better underwriting decisions.

Instead, he had returned with a bride.

It was his mother Vander took after, and thank God for that. Far better to have her copper skin, fine dark eyes, thick raven waves, and graceful bearing than his father's short stature, beady grey eyes, thinning hair, and ashen complexion. Although… to be fair, his father wouldn't be half so pallid if he ever set foot outside his office.

But it wasn't merely in terms of looks that Vander resembled his mother; he had inherited her spirit as well. When his father had begged her to leave her country, her family, and everything she had ever known behind and cross the ocean with him on the strength of three weeks' acquaintance, this was the woman who had laughed and replied, "Why not?"

Vander couldn't fathom why his mother had said yes. He could understand her yearning for adventure well enough. But how on earth had this free-spirited woman looked at his father, whose idea of a wild night was putting two sugars in his tea, and thought, now there is my life partner?

His mother had laughed when he asked her about it. "I had your father marked from the start. I did long to see the world, but my maman always told me, ‘Azita, the most important thing is to find a man who will treat you like a queen.' And I knew at once that was Cedric." She smiled triumphantly. "I was right."

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, his mother framed his face. "You look as if your spirits are low. I take it you spoke with your father?"

As always, they spoke in Persian, the official court language of Hyderabad, where his mother had grown up, liberally sprinkled with whatever English terms lacked a precise equivalent. "Maman, he says I have to marry."

She laughed, a bright, sparkling sound. "Look at your face—you would think marriage was a medieval form of torture."

Vander flicked an eyebrow toward the ceiling. "Is it not?"

She shook her head, but she was smiling. "There is an age for everything. You are not two and twenty anymore. It will be all right. You will see." She took his hands in hers and pressed them, looking him in the eye. "Vander… ask Letty."

Vander blinked at her. "Letty? You mean… David's little sister?"

"Of course."

It hadn't occurred to him that he could ask Letty for help. But now that he thought on it… it was the perfect solution.

Lady Leticia Daughtry was about the only respectable young lady he knew, after all. She was bound to know the other debutantes, to know which ones were all right and which ones were prone to hysterics.

Letty would be the perfect person to advise him. She could even introduce him to some likely girls, and if Vander's other plans fell through and he had no choice but to marry, at least he would wind up with a bride who was relatively tolerable.

Vander smiled for the first time all morning. "Why didn't I think of that? That's just what I'll do—I'll ask Letty."

"Good!" His mother beamed at him.

"I'm even dining at Daughtrey House tonight," Vander added. A formal dinner was an event he normally would have avoided. But David had been nagging him to dine with his family for the past week, and considering such stuffy occasions were his only opportunities to see his best friend these days, he had grudgingly agreed to attend.

"Perfect! You will stop here afterward and let me know what she says, won't you?"

"Hmm?" He wasn't sure there would be much to report. He would ask Letty to choose a few young ladies for him to meet, and she would say yes. The more interesting part would be when she actually started making introductions. But his mother's eyes were imploring, so he bowed. "Of course, Maman."

His mother clasped her hands. "Oh, I will be waiting with bated breath! Cedric," she called to his father, who had appeared at the top of the stairs, "come quickly. I have the best news!"

Once he reached the bottom of the stairs, his father bowed over his mother's hand, pressing a lingering kiss against her knuckles. "What is it, my queen?"

"Vander is going to ask Letty!"

His father swung around to face Vander. "That is good news, indeed!" He reached out and squeezed Vander's upper arm. "Well done, son."

"Right." Vander wasn't sure why they were making such a fuss over his asking Letty to advise him. But if it got them off his back for the next few weeks, he wasn't about to complain. "Well, then. I think I'll head over to Gentleman Jackson's and go a few rounds."

"Yes, yes," his mother said, shooing him out the door. "Go and have your fun, but do not forget your promise to come back tonight and tell me everything!"

Vander would do that. He would go and box. That would clear his mind.

Because he had some planning to do if he was going to figure out how to avoid his father's trap.