Idly straightening his coat, he went back down the steps and began to stroll down the street to where he had left the carriage. He had no idea where he was going now. Every door he had knocked upon had been firmly shut in his face. Every person he had tried to speak to had refused to see him and sent him on his way with cold precision or outright rudeness.
He shook aside his confusion over the why of that for he had a more important problem to sort out. Where should he go? He had hoped to find some old acquaintance to stay with but the women of the aristocracy were blocking him from that goal at every turn. The Mallam town house, owned for many years by the Earls of Fieldgate, could never be denied him but the very thought of sleeping under the same roof as his mother turned his stomach. He was not sure he could restrain himself from acting upon his anger with her. He glanced over at Thomas, clean and dressed fine, walking at his side.
“It appears that I have no place to stay,” he said.
“Foolish women.” Thomas shook his head as they reached the carriage. “You may be a rutting swine, m’lord . . .”
“Thank you, Thomas,” Brant murmured. “How kind of you to say so.”
Thomas ignored Brant’s interruption and continued, “But you would never, ever hurt any woman, not even the most evil-tempered besom.”
“Thank you. ’Tis a shame none of my friends are in the city right now. If they were, I would have been saved from this rather humiliating exercise.”
“Then we had best take ourselves back to the Warren. There is a lot of room there.”
“I cannot stay there, Thomas.” Brant fought to ignore how much the idea of doing so tempted him. “Lady Olympia is unwed and none of her male relations are staying at the Warren to act as chaperone. To share a house with her under those conditions would damage her reputation beyond repair.”
Thomas made a sound that was rife with disgust and mockery. “Society is full of fools. She is no tender young lass but a widow. And good thing she is a widow, too, or she would be taunted sorely for being on the shelf and all.”
“She would?” Brant blinked as all Thomas had just said finally settled in his mind and grabbed the boy by the arm. “Wait! Lady Olympia is a widow?”
“You did not know?” Thomas finally pulled his arm free and started to climb into the carriage. “She was wed while little more than a babe and the fool then died. She says there are a lot of privileges to being a widow and one is that she does not have to be beholding to anyone.”
Since he had no idea where else to go, Brant told the driver to take them to the Wherlocke Warren and climbed into the carriage. “That may be true but she must still take great care with her reputation, especially since I doubt many recall what must have been a very brief marriage. Even if we had a few of her close kinsmen there to chaperone us, it could still stir up some damaging whispers if I stayed at the Warren whilst in the city. We have just seen, most clearly, that I am a pariah.”
Thomas frowned for a moment. “That means a bad person?”
“Very bad.”
“What? Because you drank too much and bedded a lot of doxies? Pah! That be what most of the toffs do.”
“Perhaps, but I think not with the vigor I have over the last two years.” He sighed and looked out of the carriage window, fleetingly wishing he had not sent his own carriage back to Fieldgate. “I cannot think that I did anything worthy of this amount of scorn, however.”
Brant wished his friends were in town. Somewhat estranged from him though they were, he knew without a doubt that not one of them would have denied him a place to stay. He had only briefly thought of going to their town houses anyway, hoping the invitation to use such places whenever he pleased had remained open, but decided it was wrong to put the onus of granting him or denying him entrance upon some hireling or relative.
“There is, of course, nothing to stop us from going to the Warren to enjoy a little tea and company as I plan my next step,” he said after a moment of regret for allowing friendships to lag.