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borrow misfit waistcoats and parade around London ballrooms dressed as a buffoon. While he’d rusticated in the country everything he owned had gone out of style. He shook his head in hopeless resignation. Destitution had a way of hammering humbleness into one’s spirit. Pride nearly broken, it was time for dire measures.
    After meeting with the marquess, he’d located a pawn shop and sold the one dear item he owned. The act effectuated emotion and threatened his resolve, despite his best efforts to squash the reaction. Selling his mother’s pearl pendant proved the desperate scrape at the bottom of the barrel. Fond memories of his father pinning the charm to the lining of his waistcoat for good luck during
business ventures
flooded his mind, rousing to break his melancholy were it not for the vague remembrances of his mother that followed quickly thereafter.
    She’d died when he was still a lad, his father forced into the role of nurturer and provider. The old man had done a bang-up job in all the ways most important, free with his time, both loving and patient. He never wished to remarry and could often be found admiring his wife’s portrait when he believed no one observed.
    Valerian shook his head in cadence to his footsteps across the cobblestones. His father had given him his mother’s pendant while on his deathbed. It was an odd little charm composed of a teardrop pearl with a silver clasp engraved in a scrolled design. The owner of the pawn shop had remarked on its unique craftsmanship. Val hoped it remained available when he pulled himself from debt because he never wished to sell it, vainly maintaining optimism Jasper would repair his ways before it became necessary. As of yet, things had not proceeded in any promising manner.
    For now, the money he gained would be well spent on food, tailoring, and overdue wages for the servants, because in essence he had little else to his name beside a ramshackle country house, a filthy, ill-fitted waistcoat, and one rapscallion of a brother, whose whereabouts were Val’s next matter of business. The tempting scent of fresh bread wafted from the bakery on the corner where he’d paused and the comforting smell cemented his determination.
    Recovering his horse from the post, he mounted and steered toward Barnaby Street. Turner recovered a scrawled notation from Jasper’s bedchamber. If the information proved correct, Jasper was spending the weekend at Randolph Beaufort’s town house, a friend from university. In all matters Jasper, Val embraced skepticism. University? He doubted good old Randy would prove the intellectual type.
    A short time later Valerian aimed Arcadia down the narrow cobbles, his goal in sight. This section of London indicated wealth, a banquet of ne’er-do-well gentlemen swimming in lard, situated in row-houses where the only aspiration was to lessen the family coffers and explore the indulgent opportunities available to idle aristocracy. Val’s preconceived assumption strengthened as he approached the cream-colored residence. Some unidentifiable article of clothing hung from the second story wrought iron railing and the bright orange paint of the front door indicated the town house was one of tomfoolery more than ambition.
    He threaded Arcadia’s reins through the iron loop of the hitching post near the curb and flipped a coin to the lad waiting for the opportunity before Val sidestepped a crooked topiary and climbed the four steps to drop the knocker. No one answered. Tamping down his impatience, he rested a palm against the left pilaster and leaned over the railing in an attempt to peer into the lower bow window, but thick drapery obscured his view. He pounded the knocker with measured force and skimmed his eyes upward where the sounds of a casement opening drew his attention. Jasper’s smiling face emerged soon after. He wore no cravat, his white lawn shirt gaping at the neck, his hair about his head in unruly direction. With observable effort,