Chapter 21
Two hours had passed by the time Charles had drunk himself beneath a card table.
“Looks like you need a hand, Lonsdale.” James Fordyce, the Earl of Pembroke reached under the table and offered a hand to him. Charles gripped the hand and allowed himself to be hauled up on his feet. His vision cart-wheeled and he blinked rapidly, trying to get a steady fix on the man’s face.
“Ready to go home, Lonsdale?” Pembroke asked.
“Suppose I ought to. Bloody hell, what a night.”
Pembroke slid one arm around Charles’s waist, supporting him outside to hail a hackney to get him home. Linley emerged from the shadows of a nearby mew and joined Pembroke in supporting Charles by ducking under Charles’s left arm.
“There you are, lad,” Charles greeted the boy.
Linley’s disapproving scowl cut a
