Page 83 of Marriage Most Scandalous
“We were having dinner at our hotel. The Poussins, brother and sister, were eating at the next table and struck up a conversation with us. We were asked to join them. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“What were they doing there?”
“Merely having dinner. They lived in the city nearby, often ate at that hotel. The brother, Pierre, didn’t stay long but didn’t insist his sister leave with him, either, which made me suspect that while they were portraying themselves as French aristocrats, and certainly dressed the part, they really weren’t. But anyway, as soon as her brother left, Juliette started flirting outrageously with Denton. He was too deep in his cups to really notice, but they ended up going up to his room together.”
“Why didn’t you stop them?”
“Whatever for? I concluded by then that she was a high-class whore who would cost him a few pounds instead of a few coppers. He’d been having such a lousy time on the trip, I thought he might enjoy the diversion. She was beautiful. She spent the night with him.”
“And yet ends up married to you? You might want to explain that quickly before my fist finds your face again.”
“I never married her. But do you want this out of order, or shall I continue?”
Sebastian gritted his teeth. “Go on.”
“The next day my father showed up. He was waiting in my room when I returned to dress for dinner. I was delighted to see him until I got a good look at him. He was distraught. Good Lord, I could almost smell his fear. I was alarmed, of course. I’d never seen him like that before.”
“Gambling away one’s inheritance will do that to people,” Sebastian concluded from Giles’s earlier remark.
“I wish it had only been that, but it wasn’t. He’d not only lost his inheritance, and mine for that matter, but he’d continued to gamble in order to recoup his losses!”
“With what?”
“Borrowed money, of course. He’d been borrowing from your father for years, apparently. The debt got so high he’d even been obliged to turn over the deed to our home to Douglas. But even someone as generous as your father had to draw the line somewhere and refused to give him any more money. My father resented that. I could hear it in his tone when he was explaining all this to me.”
“‘Douglas had everything,’ my father said. ‘A better title, a wonderful mother who doted on him, more money than he’d ever need.’ My father didn’t understand why Douglas had to cut him off.”
“You said Cecil was running for his life?”
Giles sighed. “He ended up borrowing money from the wrong sort of people in London, the sort that won’t tolerate outstanding debts. They’d given him a date to pay up or pay with his life. He couldn’t meet the deadline.”
“And you had no prior warning of any of this?”
“None, but I didn’t really see my father often in those last couple of years. And he did rage at me once for spending too much money, which was a shock. But I didn’t take him seriously. He was foxed at the time. You see, he was trying, desperately, to continue our lives as if nothing had changed. Good Lord, he even let me take the tour, when there was no money to pay for it. Your father paid for it, by the way, and without being asked. He might have refused to support my father’s gambling anymore, but they were still friends—at least he thought they were.”
“What are you implying?”
“I think my father’s resentment against Douglas had turned to hatred by then. How else could he come up with such an outlandish scheme to use against Douglas in order to get himself out of debt?”
“Your supposed death?” Sebastian guessed. “How the devil was that going to get him out of debt?”
“Guilt. He was certain that Douglas would be so overcome with it that he would cancel their debt and even make further recompense. And he was right. Your father did exactly that.”
“And disowned me,” Sebastian snarled as he stood up.
Giles put up a restraining hand. “Wait, that was never part of it. I didn’t even know that had happened until years later. It was certainly never mentioned as a possible outcome. And I was in shock the day my father confessed all this and told me the solution he’d come up with. You don’t think I wanted to participate in my own death, do you?”
“You don’t want to know what I think right now,” Sebastian said, but he resumed his seat. “Continue.”
“My father really was running for his life. He didn’t come to Paris with his plan already thought-out. He’d arrived a few days earlier and apparently had a run-in with Juliette. She’d tried some scam on him for money, which didn’t work. He’d laughed in her face because he had no money. But then he saw her having dinner with Denton and me and how she was flirting with Denton. He figured she was setting Denton up for a scam as well, and that’s when the plan came to him, to use her to manipulate you and me into a duel.”
“So he’d already talked to Juliette before he came to see you?” Sebastian asked.
“Yes.”
“And how did he get her to go along with his ‘plan’?”
“He threatened to have her tossed in jail if she didn’t comply. But later, when I learned she married Denton, I realized your brother was the real reason she got involved.”
