Free This Rake of Mine by Elizabeth Boyle

now? Yet it wasn't Aunt Josephine on the other side of the door, but a small, bespectacled man, who blinked owlishly in the dim light of Jack's Seven Dials flat.
    "Lord John?" he inquired, adjusting his glasses. His tone implied that he hoped he was in the wrong place.
    "Yes," Jack replied. No use denying the fact. If the man was here to dun him, let him. There was nothing more to take. "So who sent you? Caldwell? Rodney? I haven't the funds to pay either of them."
    "Um, no. I'm from Mr. Elliott's office."
    "Mr. Elliott?" Jack heaved a sigh. "I don't recall owing him a thing." He tried to close the door, but the man persisted, pushing his way in, much as his aunt had earlier.
    "I'm here about your aunt. Your great-aunt. Lady Josephine Tremont. I work for her solicitor, Mr. Elliott."
    Jack rubbed his eyes. "You just missed her. Try for her at—"
    "Excuse me?" the fellow said.
    "I said, you missed her. She left some time ago."
    The fellow's mouth fell open. "You say your aunt was here?"
    "Yes," Jack said, growing impatient. "A few hours ago, I suppose."
    "I don't see how—" The man's nose twitched at the rank odors coming from the apartment; spilled brandy and worse—the bucket having yet to be emptied. "Yes, well, that is interesting. But as it is, my lord, Mr. Elliott sent me to—"
    "Listen, if you've come to find my aunt, she isn't here. So go around to my brother's house in Mayfair, where she's probably bedeviling some other poor sot to straighten up." He opened the door a little wider. "Good luck to you and good riddance."
    But the man was, if anything, persistent. "My lord, I haven't come to find your aunt. I've come for you. I've come about your aunt's estate. I need you to sign the necessary documents. There are procedures to be followed if the estate is to be properly passed along."
    Jack shook his head. Gads, where had Caldwell gotten that brandy last night? From the Thames? Because he was having a devil of a time following what this fellow was talking about. "What estate?"
    "Why, your aunt's, of course. Thistleton Park."
    "And why would my aunt want to give me her house? Where is she going to live?"
    "Live, my lord?" The fellow got that owlish blinking sort of look going again. "I don't think that is at issue. Now if you could be so kind to come with me down to Mr. Elliott's office, he can go over the terms of your aunt's will and—"
    "My aunt's will?" Jack repeated, gooseflesh rising on his arms, a sense of foreboding, of destiny hurtling toward him with the same rude insistence as Aunt Josephine's walking stick pounding against the floor. "Are you saying my aunt is dead?"
    "Yes, my lord. A fortnight past. I would have been here sooner, but we had some difficulty locating you."
    "But she was—" Jack stammered. "I mean to say she was…" He glanced at the door and around the room and tried to reconcile his memory.
    I'll make a Tremont of you yet…
    "My lord?" the man asked.
    Jack shook his head. Shook away the cobwebs from the night before and listened to what the man had to say.
     
    "Demmit," Jack muttered, as he glanced over at the clock. There were still a good thirty minutes before his unwanted guests would be gone.
    And Birdwell's excellent breakfast was sitting down there on the sideboard growing colder by the minute. Considering his conduct this morning, he doubted his butler could be induced to warm any of it up.
    So with that semblance of an excuse in hand, he climbed out of bed, rummaged around his disorderly room to find some relatively clean clothes, and tugged them on.
    If anything, he told himself, he needed to go downstairs and ensure that his
guests
were well and gone.
    Bounding down the steps, he spotted, to his relief, the back of Miss Porter's skirt as she shooed her charges out the front door.
    Excellent! Out of his house and out of his life.
    Even while he congratulated himself on scaring them enough with his boorish manners to make them leave well ahead of his deadline, he found his gaze