them. They were so close that Adam intrinsically knew Nick’s every mood. “As a matter of fact,” Nick said, striving for casualness, “I had two different callers today, both of them with rather bizarre proposals.”
Adam raised a single brow.
“The first was our foreign secretary.”
“Warwick?” Adam asked. “You don’t mean to tell me the man came to you?”
“The man came to me.”
“Why in the devil would he come to you?”
“He wants us to commit financial suicide in order to thwart the French.”
Adam’s scowl was identical to Nick’s. “What kind of financial suicide?”
“I believe he would like for us to buy up all the francs our fortune could buy, then glut the market with them.”
“That would most definitely be financial suicide. What did you tell him?”
“I told him he was a fool.”
“Really, Nick, you could have tried to answer the man more delicately.” Though Adam and Nick shared a strong physical resemblance, they were vastly different in temperament. Where Nick was brash and single minded, Adam was diplomatic and possessed of eclectic tastes that extended to art and music—two areas that Nick abhorred. “Did you not even try to be civil to the man? He’s devilishly important!”
“I know he’s important, dammit!” Nick said.
“So what else did you tell him?”
“Not much. I had another caller. Warwick asked that I think about his proposal. He’ll be back next week.”
“You really must apply your astute financial brain to the task. Having the foreign secretary in our laps could be extremely advantageous to our business interests.”
Nick grinned. “Where’s your patriotism? I thought you’d be urging me to jeopardize my fortune for the sake of crown and country and all that.”
“It depends,” Adam said shrewdly, “how much you’ll have to stake. As it is, I know you too well to believe that you’re not going to give the proposal careful consideration.”
“It’s rather fortunate that our younger brother has such a facility for languages.”
Adam’s chocolate eyes sparkled with mirth. “So you’re already planning on dispatching him to other capitals to begin purchasing francs?”
“I never said anything of the kind.”
“Tell me, who was your other caller?”
“You remember Randolph Hollingsworth from Cambridge?”
“I thought he was in The Peninsula?”
“He is.”
“And I thought he was now Lord Agar. Wasn’t he the eldest son and did his father not die last year?”
“Right on both accounts,” Nick said.
“Then who in the devil came to see you today?”
“His sister.”
A look of stark disbelief swept over Adam’s face. “She came expressly to see you? To The City?”
“To see me and to ask that I marry her.”
Adam spit his tea all over his snowy white cravat. “You’re jesting me. I’ve seen the exquisite creature, and I know—even if you are considered irresistible to women—Lady Fiona Hollingsworth would never have to beg a man to marry her.”
Nick shrugged. “It wasn’t precisely me she wished to marry. She wanted twenty-five thousand pounds with which to pay off Spanish bandits who’ve kidnapped her brother and are holding him for ransom.”
“She really offered herself in marriage to you?”
Nick would have sworn his brother gazed at him with wistful admiration. “She really did.”
“Now I see why you couldn’t go to the ’Change this afternoon. You’re the victim of profound emotions brought on by your betrothal.”
So Adam did not understand him as well as he thought. “There is,” Nick said, a scowl on his face, “no betrothal.”
Adam spun around in his chair. “You didn’t turn down the lovely creature?”
“Of course I did! I couldn’t take advantage of a woman in a time of such stress.”
“How could you be so cruel to the lady? Do you realize how difficult it must have been for her to grovel to you?”
“Of course I realize it. That’s why I went against my better judgment and offered her the damned money.”
Adam spit out another mouthful of tea. “I don’t believe you! I’ve known you all of my one and thirty years, and I’ve never known you to give away money—except, of course, to the orphanages and free schools you established, and I hardly think Lady Fiona fits in that charitable category.”
“I did offer her the money. She refused it.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” Adam said, his face screwed up in disbelief, “that the lady was willing to sell herself to a strange man she’d never seen before but she was not willing to accept that same man’s charity?”
“She had seen me before. Twice.”
“I don’t understand. Are you saying you and she have a tendré?”
Nick shook his head with exasperation. “Of course not! The first time I saw her was at Tat’s—”
“Women don’t go to Tat’s!”
“This woman did. With her brother. He couldn’t avoid introducing her to me, though it obviously pained him to do so.”
“And the second time you saw her?”
“Last night at the theatre. Her box was opposite mine, and I believe she spent the better part of the evening staring at me.”
“Good God! Do you think . . . ?”
“The woman is not enamored of me.”
“I don’t know how you could have turned her down. You’ve said yourself you’re seeking a wife, and what woman could be more desirable than Lady Fiona Hollingsworth?”
“I can’t deny her desirability.”
“Hell, it’s like guineas raining from the heavens, and you trod over them instead of scooping them up!”
That same feeling of elation Nick experienced with Lady Fiona this afternoon swept over him again. It had been rather like guineas raining from the heavens.
