Chapter 3

“Beautiful, bewitching, beguiling, bewildering … ” Kendall Winterborne, the third Earl of Stillmore, muttered another word that began with B under his breath and flung the entire contents of the brandy snifter down his throat in one gulp. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and glanced at Chasens in the tarnished, fly-specked mirror.

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, sah, there’s a lady to see you.”

Babs. Barbara Langley, Lady Barbara Langley. Well, well, well.

Despite the fact that not five minutes ago he’d had the urge to shatter the pear- shaped snifter against the wall, grind the shards beneath the sole of his boot, where he’d wished to God her face was, he set the glass down without so much as a clink on the cold veins of the Italian marble mantel.

He held his palm to his mouth and blew out a long, slow breath. The noxious smell of brandy fumes was enough to bowl him over. Did he want her getting wind of the fact he was remotely troubled

He had to hand it to the conniving jade. She had chosen her moment earlier with the skill of a conquering field-marshal.

Then again, it was the reason she’d made such an impact on his heart. It was what gave her the right to laugh in his face as she returned the box containing that bracelet he’d paid a king’s ransom for at Ringsell’s earlier.

It was what had driven him to give her the blasted, damned trinket in the first place. Despite the fact that not five minutes ago he’d had the urge to shatter the pear- shaped snifter against the wall, grind the shards beneath the sole of his boot, where he’d wished to God her face was, he set the glass down without so much as a clink on the cold veins of the Italian marble mantel.

He held his palm to his mouth and blew out a long, slow breath. The noxious smell of brandy fumes was enough to bowl him over. Did he want her getting wind of the fact he was remotely troubled by this Baxby story? This was his move. If he could stir his cold blood.

“Cologne.” Whether he could stir his blood or not, the first step was not letting her know how hard he’d fallen and how deeply she’d cut him on the matter of losing her.

“And here, take this.” He tore off his dressing gown—charcoal, his favorite color. “I don’t want her thinking I’m indisposed. My reputation’s probably suffered enough for one damnable day.”

Why remind himself? Despite what had happened with that damned whippersnapper at the tournament earlier, he prided himself on his self-control, largely because there was nothing he cared about sufficiently to lose it. In this instance, to which the half-empty brandy decanter on the scratched walnut side table testified, he was ashamed to say he’d lost it. Completely.

“Sah, I am afraid—”

“Christ on a donkey entering Jerusalem, let us not be our usual contumacious self here, Chasens, if you do not mind.” He glanced at his wavering reflection in the smudged glass. His eyes were bleary, but apart from that, he should pass muster. “Just take the robe and bring the cologne. I have been drinking … as you have not.”

“I do not deny it, sah.”

“Deny what? That more ale and whiskey has unaccountably vanished from the pantry? So you’re as foxed as me? I wondered why the household bills have rocketed lately. Don’t think I don’t keep tabs. And stop calling me sah.”

“I mean, I do not deny you have been drinking, sir.”

“Well, then. What are you standing there for like an overstuffed seal?”

“I sense strongly that when you see this lady, you will understand the reason for my hesitation.”

Damn it, did the man never smile? Or recite anything other than in a boomingly exaggerated monotone? No. Of course not. It was why Kendall had hired him on the spot, although others might find

his continuous balling of the word sir hair-tearing.

“See her? Good God, what do you mean? Unless … Hang it all, is she here with Baxby? That son-of-a-circus clown?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Then—”

“She is not Lady Langley, sir.”

Kendall drew his brows together. “Not Lady Langley? Not Lady Langley? What do you mean not Lady Langley?”

“What I say. She is not Lady Langley … sir.”

“Then who the blazes is—”

Something rustled in the glass behind him, scudding across his vision like a skiff over the smooth surface of a lake. The voice was soft as a May breeze. “Lady Malachi. Lady Splendor Malachi, Your Grace.”

What the devil?

A woman, covered as monumentally as a tomb in some gauzy green thing—a color he loathed, too reminiscent of spring—stood framed like a portrait in his doorway. What was she doing there? God in the firmament above, he was foxed, but surely he hadn’t sent for her from Madam Frou-Frou’s brothel, had he?

She swept forward, her velvet-gloved hand extended, trailing no doubts in her wake. Had he sent for her to fill the long and otherwise dreary reaches of the night before he shot that damned boy? Christ in a curricle driving up Ludgate Hill, how could he have done that?

“Yes, indeed. Do forgive me. Your man here asked me to wait, but I was in too much of a hurry.”

This was a first. A woman in a hurry? For him? How novel. He should write it down. It would be good to know in years to come such a thing had once befallen him.

He shook his head to clear it. All right. Perhaps he was foxed, but what the blazes was her excuse? Barging in here like this? Sweeping dusty tumbleweeds across his carpet on the hem of that thing, that gauzy concoction she was wearing? How many clients

did she have today that she couldn’t wait? What was Madame Frou-Frou thinking about letting so mercenary a hussy loose on the unsuspecting public? Unrequested fraternization with clients was not allowed.

Unless … Was it one of Madam Frou-Frou’s sinful little jewels that he’d dallied with before Babs come to spring a bastard upon him? If so, it would most certainly show by now. It didn’t show. Unless, in addition to that hideous dress that had trailed all that dust from his hallway into here, she was wearing a steel corset? Who, what, was she? A woman who stood almost as tall as he was one he’d be bound to remember. He didn’t. And yet there was something, something vaguely familiar about her stance.

“Pardon me.” He felt duty-bound to narrow his eyes. “Have we met before?” She stopped dead in the middle of his rug, her throat fluttering beneath the veil.

“Us?”

“Have you just wandered off the streets? Come to the wrong house? Or are without the slightest idea of the ruin this will spell for your reputation?”

“For sure, if our paths had ever crossed, I would be certain to recall someone so very charming and caring as your good self.”

“Well, that’s a relief. Even if no one’s said I was that before.”

He wrinkled his nose. What was that smell? That awful stink assaulting his nostrils? Orange? Bergamot? Rose-musk? Lilac? Myrtle? Every hideous odor in the flower bed snaking about his sitting room. His sacred place that smelled of cigars, brandy, and decay. He walked to the window and threw up the sash, breathed deeply three times of the essence of horse dung and dead rodents, let it wind up his nose, strike the casing of his skull, then he blew his breath out again and dragged up his head.

“Out. Chasens, remove her.”

“I—” she began.

“Now.”

“In a moment, Your Grace. When you have heard what I have to say.”

The thundering realization was replaced by a more subtle reflection. He’d given Babs that bracelet. Surely she knew the bracelet was as good as a ring? And really she must know she had his heart. It cost all of fifty guineas. The bracelet, that was. His heart wasn’t for sale. Not at any price. Not when Marietta hadn’t just ripped it out, as if she’d a raptor’s claw attached to her wrist, she’d stood on it as casually as this chit did his rug, leaving an empty cavity in his chest. But whatever he gave, whatever he refused, did it merit Babs sending this chit here like this to catch him out when he was at a low ebb? And get him to say something he did mean? With every bone in his body. Babs’ move obviously. One he’d check.

He released the window ledge. “So, that’s what this is about?”

“I beg your pardon?”

He affected bored eyebrows. “How damnable is this? How damnable is Lady Langley to have got you to press your way in here so you can get some quote from me and then write about it in your miserable society newspaper for the whole of London to read? ‘The mean, cantankerous earl who shall be nameless.’ Well, it wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Me? Write for the newspaper? I could I suppose, but … Gracious, is that what you think?”

It didn’t discomfort her half as much as he’d like so he continued.

“You. Well, do you know what I do with your type? What I do with your rag and all it says about me, Miss, whoever you are?”

“Malachi.”

“Every morning, after breakfast? Sometimes before?”

“Oh, let me think.”

He could stride to the door but why wear out his boots? He liked them as they were. “Assuming you do. But in case you don’t, allow me to say it again—”

“Please don’t bother. Especially not when the answer is probably to shoot it at dawn.”

His mind thudded. Exactly what he was going to have to do tomorrow to that damned boy, or look a damned fool, because of Babs.

“Chasens. The door. Now.”

“I mean … ” She gulped. “I mean it is of no interest to me what you do with your newspapers after you have read them.”

“Isn’t that a crumb to be said for you?”

Despite what he’d thought about wearing out his boots, he swept across the rug.

These were his rooms, and his rooms were a male preserve. There wasn’t a chamber maid, and he’d dismissed the last cook in a heated, throwing-the-pots-against-the-wall row over a slice of venison—it was overdone. As for scullery wenches chopping their fingers instead of the potatoes and forgetting to remove them from the pot? He couldn’t stand scullery maids any more than he could stand having this woman here, standing like a dying kipper in her green veil and dress, a rancid damn color he loathed with passion and hatred, just as he loathed newspaper reporters. For good reason. He grasped her velvet-clad elbow.

“Now go.”

“Well, I could.” She dug her heels into the rug. “Yes, I suppose there are those who might say why not go? Just go now and say no more, but you see—”

“Then do it,” he snarled. “Don’t have me drag you to the door, because I will. I don’t want you here.”

“I just wanted to say that you played my cousin, Nathan, earlier today at the chess competition at Boodle’s.”

“Sir.” Chasens drew himself up as if a ramrod had been thrust up his spine. “You must forgive me. But she said she had come from His Grace, the Duke of Brampton himself, on a matter of tournament etiquette, or I should never have let her in.”

“Indeed, I did, sir,” she said, “and indeed he did, although, of course, His Grace, the honorable duke, does not actually know I am here. No. I took it upon myself to do that, hoping you would not

mind.”

He fought not to snap something, like the door clean from its hinges, and throw it at the fireplace. “Mind? Are you out of yours, by any chance?”

“I don’t see that necessarily follows—”

“Your cousin?” He glared at her. “You mean that damnable little sneak is your cousin?”

“He is my cousin. Yes. But whether he is a damnable sneak—”

“You have debased yourself coming here to speak to me, for a damnable cheat? Incredible.”

As was the feel of her rumpled indignity against his body, her clinging to her veil as if she was terrified it would fall off. What was she doing, digging her heels into his rug? What was he doing, trying to dislodge her? He never got in tangles with women like this.

“I have come here to ask for your mercy. Please.” She grabbed hold of her skirt.

“You are under some foolhardy impression that I have any? Christ in an air balloon, do not kneel on the floor.”

He raised his voice. The floor was not where he wanted her. All right, it was, especially now he caught a glimpse of the ridiculously pink seam of her lips through the veil that had ridden up and was stuck to them. He tightened his fingers around her elbow before she sank any lower. “Get up, now.”

“If you say so, Your Grace. I just—”

“Stand,” he managed, just, to say, difficult when she thudded onto the floor. God, but she was clumsy.

“I—”

He held out his hand. Her gloved fingertips clasped his, the feel, warm and pleasant. He abhorred warm and pleasant. He abhorred mysteriously rustling green dresses and gauchely, awkward, over-perfumed women in them too, but his throat wasn’t the only thing that tightened as he drew her to her feet.

Damn Babs to hell. It was the second time today he’d been

inexplicably ambushed. First with that damned boy, now this. He never found boys attractive, or women whose faces he couldn’t see. Since Marietta, he’d striven to keep his attractions under control. Until Babs chanced along, he’d succeeded.

“Your cousin?” he heard himself say.

“Nathan.” She swiped her veil back into place, clasped a hand around it and her throat. “Yes. Of course, he doesn’t know I’m here.”

“You mean he might have saved you a wasted journey?”

“That remains to be seen. There is something you should know.”

Whatever it was, he’d no desire to hear. Christ on the cross with nails in his feet, could the man whose wife had divorced him and who had disinherited his daughter afford to be seen as soft, regardless of his distaste for killing yet another man? A boy actually, who probably couldn’t shoot straight? The answer to that was no. There was nothing this woman could possibly say that would change his mind. He might as well forestall her from trying.

“That he didn’t cheat?” he grunted. “Is as innocent as the day he was born?”

“Both these things actually, Your Grace. He—”

“Cheated and now seeks to—”

“Is not even seventeen.”

For a second the tick of the mantelshelf clock, the rise and fall of his visitor’s breast clearly outlined by the smooth texture of her gown, were all he was aware of. Christ on the cross, seventeen?

The carrion crows had come home to roost in the ruined walls of his tarnished heart sure enough.

She seemed to read his silence as deliberation. “Imagine how benevolent it would make you look if, for the sake of argument, you were to find it in your heart to let this go, Your Grace.”

Benevolent? Him? He did not think so. Not for a quarter of a quarter second. As for imagining, he didn’t do that either as a rule.

He stared at the remains of the complicated, swirling patterns on the rug. “Seventeen?” The word was rust on his tongue. A rust

he wanted to spit out.

“Yes, Your Grace. His birthday is next week, in fact, now you’re asking.”

“I wasn’t.”

Ironic, wasn’t it? How once he’d been seventeen himself, and no one had put in a single pleading word for him, certainly not a shapely snit like this. Although he had waltzed happily to his doom. For the best part of three years, he had even loved every minute of it, because there had been no suggestion that the older woman he had been inveigled into marrying to secure his family’s fortune was anything less than what he’d thought her. And even when the doubts set in, for the next three years he had still managed to overlook what had stared him in the face.

When Marietta left, it had been so easy to level his pistol on another man’s heart because his own heart was a wilderness, a blasted heath, a blackened place where no one dared venture. Had death done so, it would not have been an unwelcome stranger. How he had prayed for it. Then.

But now?

Could he grant this? Spare the boy? Put the snit, standing there with bated breath, out of her misery? Simply because no one had pleaded for mercy for him was no reason to shoot anyone. Was it? He walked to the mantelpiece.

“Well, him living to see his birthday is something he should have considered before endeavoring to win by cheating, if that is indeed the case.”

“Cheating? Nathan has no need of stooping to anything as low as cheating. How dare you say so. If that is what you think, you’re wrong. Or deluded. Nathan is a master of the game.”

He raised his face heavenwards. “Of course the little sneak is a cheat. Probably the biggest one in Christendom too. You should just admit it instead of making out I’m the one who is deluded. Then I might be damn well disposed to listen to you. But this? This is just families all over.”

“What?”

Didn’t the Dowager Duchess of Stokes refuse to speak to him to this day because plainly it was all his fault her daughter had run off with another man, his fault for all the cruelties she had inflicted on him? Marietta was perfect after all. He lowered his gaze, glanced in the mirror. Perhaps it was the word cheat? His visitor was struggling to contain her claws as if he’d personally called her one. It was time to spare himself the further irritation of watching her lose her temper and attempt to strangle him with her veil.

“Now. If you will be so good, the hallway is there behind you.”

Had he just felled her at forty paces? If so that was what he’d call good.

She took a tiny step toward him. “Well, I might be so good, were it not for the fact that his mother, his father, even us cousins, in fact, his entire family, depend on him. Who will take care of us if you kill him?”

He’d heard it all. Was this family waiting in his cold hallway to be ushered in? It wouldn’t surprise him. All that surprised him was how far he’d let her advance. He let go of the mantelpiece. A drink was in order. Not a large one. A putting-this-in-perspective one.

He crossed to the side table, nodded at Chasens still standing like a sentinel at the door to leave—the man had no doubt, seen and heard enough. He deliberately waited till he’d filled the glass before asking. “Pardon me for asking, but why don’t you do that? Take care of your family, that is?”

She stopped fiddling with her veil, smoothing whatever hair was underneath it into place. “I’m sorry?”

“Spending a fraction less on your frivolous dressmaking bills would keep them in coal and candles for a year.”

Unless he was very much mistaken, that damned rag she was wearing looked to have cost an arm and a leg. Lace, silk, and velvet? Completely inappropriate in this weather. Completely inappropriate, period. And she expected him to ignore a damned cheat because the family depended on him? Small wonder the

cousin dressed like a guttersnipe. Keeping this snit would land the nation in debt, never mind the average family.

Christ in whatever conveyance he could procure at short notice, was this the kind of snit his father had run off with, leaving Kendall with a pile of debts and no option but to marry Marietta? Except, of course, the snit his father had run off with had been a common, serving-wench snit.

“My dressmaking bills?” she said after a long moment.

How nice to know he’d struck a nerve. Now at the very least, she might desist from running up more. He set the stopper back on the decanter. “Yes. You must have them to dress like that.”

“Well, perhaps that is so. But I was really hoping to discuss—”

“Hope? Hope’s like air. Something people die of starvation trying to live on. And please don’t even think of attempting to get back on your knees. I don’t want women lying on my carpet.”

“But how can you be so cruel?” She tilted her chin, giving him the benefit of a glimpse of her hair through the concealing veil. Strawberry-bloody-blonde. Of all the damnable colors in the paint palette, it had to be that one. Marietta’s. Let this business of the duel go? He toyed for a second with the decanter and in that second made up his mind.

“Quite easily. The way out is there. Thank you again for giving me your cousin’s name. At least I will now have the pleasure of knowing it before I have the equally damnable pleasure of killing him. Now, if you don’t mind … ?”

Yes. The crows might caw and the dawn turn dark. Whoever this foolish woman was, by tomorrow night the boy would be just another sadness at the bottom of just another glass.