''Then plead with your grandfather."
''He would never lend me, much less give me, a single groat." Jack's jaw muscles ticked at the insult. Then he looked up, pinning Harding with his infamously beautiful eyes. '' He loathes me because I am my father's son. And since that is a fact I will never change, I do not expect him to reverse course at this point in time. He can't deny me his title in due time, but he can damned we'll keep his Fortune from me and so he shall."
"Then plead with your friends."
Jack grinned sardonically, finally giving up and closing his book. "You know very well my friends are all women. Their husband wouldn't take kindly to giving charity to their wives' lover."
The secretary sighed forlornly at the truth. Jack Fairchild had wasted his talents and grace and good looks on impoverished men and the wives of powerful men, instead of cultivating the elite of the beau Monde. For a sharp witted man, he was impossibly oblivious to his own deficits and attributes, or how he might have used both for his very own gain.
He did not, for example , fully appreciate or take advantage of his own beauty, as Harding surely would have had he been so blessed. Jack Fairchild cut the kind of riveting figure that even men could not help but notice. Given Jack's natural grace, his dashing mane of onyx hair, and his high, Ruddy, lean-cut cheeks, his conquest of women taken for granted. Expected even. And the extent to which this behavior did not inspire jealousy was owing to the fact that everyone, including the husband's of his lovers, sensed that Jack just couldn't help himself.
I mean a beautiful man had to have women,didn't he?
This unspoken contract required gentlemanly discretion, naturally. While he might ruin a woman's ability to love her husband by having an affair with her, Jack would never be so inconsiderate or selfish to even think of stealing her permanently. So he was always forgiven. After a fashion of course.
The one time Jack had been called out by a jealous husband, he'd quickly proven his skills with the pistol, lodging a bullet in the man's arm. Of course, the scandal had forced him to spend a year abroad, but his impudence had been forgiven by society in due time, and ultimately only served to enhance his reputation as a rake.
Did Jack feel remorseful for his indiscretions? Not as far as Harding could tell. He'd told his secretary on a more than one occasion that he was doing woman kind a favor. He had seen his own mother's misery in a loveless marriage. And Jack knew that the majority of women were similarly locked into unhappy political arrangements, as the rich were won't to be. He considered one night of Passion the least a woman might expect from life.
''And what about the women?" Harding now asked with resignation. ''Will you spend your time doting on them in Middledale, too, distracting you from the business at hand?"
"No, I'm a changed man. I've done with the fairer sex. I must work now . I will not let anything keep me from my efforts to restore my fortunes. "Jack looked out the window. "Ah, here we are ! We've arrived ." He cast Harding a sardonic grin. " And just in time to spare me an interview with the Inquisition."
Jack and his reluctant secretary arrived in the perfectly charming town of Middledale on a perfectly radiant summer day. The village was tucked in and around the bends and curves of a great hillside, so that one couldn't see the entire length of the main Street at a glance. One had to go exploring, shifting this way and that, rounding a mileliner's shop in order to see the farrier, and rounding that to see the cobbler's shop, walking in the shadows of quaint stone building's, enduring the curious stares of the locals.
Jack ordered the carriage to stop at one end of town, determined to walk the length of it to his new offices.
"Here we are !" he announced as he climbed down the carriage step. " What a lovely village, eh, Harding?"
''Charmed, I'm sure, sir," Harding grumbled. His legs, already burdened by his weight and a nasty case of gout, hit the hard cobblestones street with a wobble from days of disuse during the arduous coach ride from London.
" This is cozy nest of humanity !" Jack enthused, his face alive with interest, his eyes taking in everything ... the prettily weathered hand- painted signs over stores and tavens, the rainbows of the fruit and flower stalls along the way, the simple looking folk who did business here, the genteel ladies strolling down the thoroughfare with wide brimmed bonnets and fringed parasols. "And the air is so fresh."
"Fresh?"Harding moaned. "Foul smelling if you ask me."
Jack let out a peal of joyful laughter , clapping him on the back. " Oh, Harding, you amuse me. You chafe at the smell of flowers on the breeze, loamy earth from the fields nearby, the smell of sunshine in your nose, and the pleasant aroma of horses? Good God, man, I suppose you miss the choking pall fumes that hangs over the London like a dreary shroud."
" Yes, sir, I do, rather," he said, holding a kerchief to his nose. "At least the stench of burning coal is familiar."
The empty coach drove on to their destination at the end of the thoroughfare, leaving Jack to stride and Harding to hobble after him through the scenic village.
Jack had fond, though distant, memories of Middledale from childhood. His mother used to take him here on shopping excursion from Tutley Castle and would buy him candied treats. She'd once bought him a pair of shoes here. They'd hurt like hell, but he'd been so proud of them. they'd smelled richly of leather, just as the shop did now when they passed by it's open door.
Jack pulled a coin out of his pocket and tossed it to Harding. The secretary caught it between his perspiring palms just in time. " What's this, sir?"