Lord of Scoundrels

by Loretta Chase

  She bent close to the thick glass. “Mrs. Ingleby,” she said sharply. “Come here and tell me what that is.”

  The housekeeper hurried across the room to the west-facing window. She looked out. Then her hand went to her throat. “Mercy on us. That must be the little gatehouse, my lady. And it looks to be…on fire.”

  The alarm was sounded immediately, and the house swiftly emptied as its inhabitants raced out to the gatehouse.

  The small pepperbox structure guarded one of Athcourt’s lesser-used gates. Its gatekeeper normally spent Sunday evenings at a prayer meeting. If it burnt to the ground—which was likely, for the fire must rise high before anyone could see it—the loss would be no catastrophe.

  However, His Lordship’s timber yard was not far from that gate. If the fire spread thither, the timber stacks would be lost, along with the sheds filled with sawyers’ tools. Since the timberyard supplied the lumber used to build and repair the homes of most of the estate’s dependents, the fire was a community concern, drawing every able-bodied man, woman, and child from the village as well.

  Everything happened, in other words, just as Charity Graves had promised Vawtry it would.

  All of the small world of Athton descended upon the blazing gatehouse. In the excitement, Vawtry had no difficulty slipping into Lord Dain’s house unnoticed.

  It was not as easy, though, as it would have been a week hence, as originally planned. For one, Vawtry couldn’t pick his moment, but had to set the fire soon after a rainstorm. The wood and stone pepperbox was stubbornly slow to take fire at all, let alone blaze up to the heights necessary to be seen from miles around. Thanks to the damp, the blaze would also be slow to spread, which meant it would be under control a good deal more quickly than was comfortable for Mr. Vawtry.

  Furthermore, the original scheme had required him only to make the conflagration. Charity had been responsible for getting into Athcourt and making off with the icon. Instead, Mr. Vawtry was obliged to play both roles, which meant a mad race from one end of the estate to the other—all the while praying the concealing darkness wouldn’t also conceal an obstacle that would cause him to break his neck.

  Thirdly, Charity had been in the house several times and knew the general layout. Vawtry had been there once, for the previous marquess’s funeral, and one overnight stay was not enough to master the scores of stairways and passages of one of the largest houses in England.

  The good news was that, as Charity had promised, no one had bothered to lock all the doors and windows before running off for firefighting heroics, and Mr. Vawtry got into the proper end of the house with no trouble.

  The bad news was that he had to wander from one room to another before he discovered that the north backstairs route Charity had described lay behind a door disguised as part of a wall of well-preserved Tudor-era printed paneling.

  Not until after he’d found it did he recall Charity’s laughing remark that all the servants’ exits “pretended to be something else, like there were no servants at all, and the big house run itself.”

  Still, he managed to find it, and after that it was quick work to reach the second floor.

  The door to Dain’s apartments was the first on the left. As Charity had assured him, one needed but a moment to slip in and another to cross the vast chamber and collect the icon. Most important, the icon was precisely where she’d said it would be.

  Lord Dain kept the heathenish picture his wife had given him on his bedstand, Joseph the foot-man had told his younger brother…who had told his betrothed…who had told her brother…who happened to be one of Charity’s regular customers.

  But never again, Vawtry vowed as he exited the bedchamber. After tonight, Charity would share her bed and stunning skills with only one man. That man was the daring, heroic Mr. Roland Vawtry, who would take her abroad, away from Dartmoor and its unwashed rustics. He’d show her the sophisticated world of Paris. The French capital would seem like fairyland to her, he thought as he hurried down the stairs, and he would be her knight in shining armor.

  Lost in his fantasies, he pushed open a door, raced down a set of stairs…and found himself in a hallway he didn’t remember. He hurried to the end, which turned out to be the music room.

  After going through half a dozen more doors, he ended up in the ballroom, from whose entrance he saw the massive main staircase. He started toward it, then paused, undecided whether to try to find the back stairs again.

  But it’d be hours before he found it, he told himself, and the house was empty. He made for the stairway, hurried down and across the broad landing, round the corner…and stopped short.

  A woman stood on the stairs, looking up at him…then down, at the icon clutched against his breast.

  In that instant’s flicker of Lady Dain’s glance from his face to the precious object he held, Vawtry regained his wits—and the use of his limbs.

  He ran down the stairs, but she lunged at him, and he dodged too late. She grabbed his coat sleeve and he stumbled. The icon flew from his hands. He regained his balance in the next instant, and pushed her out of his way.

  He heard a crash, but didn’t heed it. His eyes on the picture at the foot of the carpeted stairs, he raced down and snatched it up.

  Jessica’s head had struck the wall and, grabbing blindly for balance, she knocked a Chinese vase from its pedestal. It struck the railing and shattered.

  Though the world was reeling perilously toward darkness, she dragged herself upright. Firmly grasping the railing, she hurried down, ignoring the colored lights dancing about her head.

  As she reached the great hall, she heard a door slam, and masculine curses, then the hurried tap of boots upon stone. Her mind clearing, she realized that her prey must have been trying to escape by the back way and got himself lost in the pantry instead.

  She dashed down the hall toward the screens passage and reached the pantry door as he was running out.

  This time he dodged her successfully. But even as he was bolting for the vestibule, she had grabbed the nearest object at hand—a porcelain Chinese dog—and it was out of her hand almost in the same instant, hurtling toward him.

  It struck the side of his head, and he staggered, then sank to his knees, still clutching the icon. As she ran toward him, she saw blood trickling from his face. Even so, the wretched man wouldn’t give up. He was crawling to the door and reaching for the handle. When she grabbed his collar, he twisted about and flung his arm up, knocking her away so violently that she lost her balance and fell over onto the tiles.

  Jessica saw his fingers wrap around the handle, saw it move…and flung herself upon him. Grabbing a fistful of his hair, she slammed his head against the door.

  He was pushing at her, screaming curses while he tried to twist free, but she was too furious to heed. The swine was trying to steal her husband’s precious Madonna, and he was not going to get away with it.

  “You will not!” she gasped, slamming his head against the door again. “Never!” Slam. “Never!” Slam.

  Vawtry let go of the door and the icon and rolled sideways to get her off him.

  She wouldn’t be shaken loose. She dug her nails into his scalp, his face, his neck. He tried to roll on top of her. She thrust her knee into his groin. He jerked away and folded up onto his side, clutching his privates.

  She had just grabbed his hair again, in order to dash his skull to pieces upon the marble tile, when she felt a pair of strong hands wrap around her waist and haul her up, off Vawtry, off the floor altogether.

  “That’s enough, Jess.” Her husband’s sharp tone penetrated her mindless fury, and she left off struggling to take in the world about her.

  She saw that the great door stood open and a crowd of servants stood frozen just within it. In front of the mob of statues was Phelps…and Dominick, who was holding the coachman’s hand and gazing up slack-jawed at Jessica.

  That was all she saw, because Dain swiftly swung her up over his shoulder and marched through the screens pa
ssage and into the Great Hall.

  “Rodstock,” he said, without pausing or looking back, “the vestibule is a disgrace. Have someone see to it. Now.”

  Once his wife was safely in her bath, with Bridget tending her and two sturdy footmen posted at the entrance to her apartments, Dain returned to the ground floor.

  Vawtry, or what was left of him, lay on a wooden table in the old schoolroom, with Phelps standing guard. Vawtry’s nose was broken and he’d lost a tooth and sprained a wrist. His face was caked with dried blood and one eye was swollen shut.

  “All in all, you got off easy,” Dain said, after surveying the damage. “Lucky she hadn’t a pistol on her, aren’t you?”

  By the time he’d carried Jessica to her room, Dain had figured out what had happened. He’d seen the icon lying on the vestibule floor. He’d heard about the fire as he rode up to the house. He could put two and two together.

  He did not have to interrogate his son to understand that Vawtry and Charity Graves were partners in crime.

  Dain did not bother to interrogate Vawtry now, either, but told him what had happened.

  “You let a greedy strumpet with great, fat udders turn you into a blithering idiot,” Dain contemptuously summarized. “That’s obvious enough. What I want to know is where you got the idea the thing was worth twenty thousand pounds. Confound it, Vawtry, couldn’t you tell just by looking at it that it was worth five at most—and you know no pawnbroker would pay even half that.”

  “No time…to look.” Vawtry was having a hard time getting the syllables around his swollen gums and mashed lips. His utterance sounded like “Oh—die—ooh—rook,” but with Phelps’ help, Dain was able to interpret.

  “In other words, you never saw it before this night,” said Dain. “Which means someone told you about it—Bertie most likely. And you believed him—which is imbecilic enough, for no one in his right mind listens to Bertie Trent—but then you had to go and tell Satan’s own whore. And she, you have discovered, would sell her firstborn for twenty thousand quid.”

  “You was foolish, no mistake,” Phelps chimed in mournfully, like a Greek chorus. “She sold her boy for only fifteen hundred. Now, don’t you feel like a bit of a chucklehead, sir? Meanin’ no offense, but—”

  “Phelps.” Dain turned a baleful eye upon his coachman.

  “Aye, me lord.” Phelps gave him a wide-eyed look that Dain did not believe for one minute.

  “I did not give Charity Graves fifteen hundred pounds,” His Lordship said very quietly. “As I recall, you most sensibly suggested that you head to the back of the inn, to prevent her escape in case she eluded me. I assumed you’d been too late and she’d fled. You did not volunteer information to the contrary.”

  “Her Ladyship were worrit the ma might make a fuss in front of the tyke,” Phelps said. “Her Ladyship didn’t want him upset no more than he was like to be already with you chargin’ in. So she told me to give the gal some quietin’ money, Her Ladyship said, ’n she could spend it how she liked. So she spent it on quietin’ the ma, ’n wrote a note, tellin’ the gal to take it ’n go to Paris ’n have a good time.”

  “Paris?” Vawtry sat up abruptly.

  “Said the fellers there’d like her better and treat her kinder ’n them hereabouts. ’N I guess the gal liked the idea, cuz she lit up purty, ’n said Her Ladyship weren’t a bad sort. ’N I was to tell Her Ladyship that she done what Her Ladyship said—tole the boy some’at or other like Her Ladyship asked her to.”

  …it was better to leave him where he would be safe…and provided for. Jessica had told the whore what to say and the whore had done it.

  Then Dain saw how much trust his wife had placed in him. If she hadn’t, she would have come with him, no matter what he said or did. But she’d trusted…that he’d make the boy feel safe, and make Dominick believe that what he’d been told was true.

  Perhaps, Dain thought, his wife knew him a great deal better than he knew himself. She saw in him qualities he’d never discerned when he’d looked into a mirror.

  If that was the case, he must believe she saw qualities in Charity he’d never suspected were there. Charity must possess something like a heart, if she’d taken the trouble to prepare Dominick for her desertion.

  Jessica had also said that Charity was a child herself.

  That seemed true enough. Plant an idea in her head, and she would run away with it.

  He found himself grinning at Vawtry. “You should have found another bauble to distract her with,” Dain said. “Something safer to scheme and dream about. She’s a child, you know. Amoral, unprincipled. At present, she has fifteen hundred pounds in her hands, and she’s forgotten all about the icon—and you. She’ll never know—or if she hears, she won’t care—that you risked your life and honor for…” Dain gave a short laugh. “What was it, Vawtry? Love?”

  Beneath the bruises and lumps and caked blood, Vawtry’s countenance turned a very dark red. “She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.”

  “I’ll wager fifty quid she’s on her way to the coast this very minute.”

  “I’ll kill her,” Vawtry croaked. “She can’t leave me. She can’t.”

  “Because you’ll hunt her down,” Dain said mockingly. “You’ll follow her to the ends of the earth. If, that is, I don’t see you hanged first.”

  The color abruptly drained from Vawtry’s battered face, leaving a mottled landscape on a sickly grey background.

  Dain studied his former comrade for a long moment. “The trouble is, I can think of no more fiendish a purgatory than the one you’ve stumbled into all by yourself. I can imagine no torment more hellish than being hopelessly besotted with Charity Graves.” He paused. “Except one.” Dain’s mouth curled into a mocking smile. “And that is being married to her.”

  It was the most efficient solution, Dain decided. It was certainly a great deal less bother than prosecuting the besotted fool.

  Vawtry had committed one crime, arson, and attempted another, theft.

  Still, he had set fire to the least valuable structure on the estate and, thanks to the damp and the quick action of Dain’s people, the damage was minimal.

  As to the theft: Jessica had punished the inept criminal more brutally than Dain would have done. That a woman had administered the punishment added a lovely touch of humiliation to Vawtry’s other woes.

  Any gentleman possessing a modicum of masculine pride would rather have his ballocks torn off with red-hot pincers than allow the world to learn he’d been thrashed by a slip of a female.

  Therefore, with the wisdom of Solomon—and a vivid recollection of Jessica’s blackmail method in Paris—His Lordship pronounced sentence.

  “You will find Charity Graves, wherever she is,” Dain told his prisoner. “And you will marry her. That will make you legally responsible for her. And I will hold you legally and personally responsible if she ever comes within ten miles of my wife, my son, or any other member of my house-hold. If she bothers us—any of us—ever again, I will throw a large dinner party, Vawtry.”

  Vawtry blinked. “Dinner?”

  “To this dinner, I will invite all of our boon companions,” Dain told him. “And when the port goes round, I shall stand up and regale the company with your fascinating adventures. I will provide a deliciously detailed account, in particular, of what I observed this evening from my front doorway.”

  After the moment it took him to comprehend, Vawtry went to pieces. “Find her?” he cried, looking wildly about him. “Marry her? How? Gad, can’t you see? I wouldn’t have got into this if I weren’t three paces ahead of the bailiffs. I’ve nothing, Dain. Less than that.” He groaned. “Five thousand less, to be precise. I’m ruined. Don’t you see? I wouldn’t have come to Devon at all if Beaumont hadn’t told me I could win a fortune at the wrestling match.”

  “Beaumont?” Dain repeated.

  Vawtry didn’t heed him. “Fortune, indeed. With those buffle-headed amateurs. Do you believe it?” He raked his fingers through his
hair. “He was roasting me, the swine. ‘Greatest match since Cann and Polkinghorne,’ he said.”

  “Beaumont,” Dain said again.

  “Twenty thousand, he told me the thing was worth,” Vawtry went on miserably. “But he was roasting me about that, too, wasn’t he? Said he knew a Russian who’d sell his firstborn for it. And I believed him.”

  “So it wasn’t Bertie Trent who put the idea in your head, after all, but Beaumont,” Dain said. “I might have known. He bears me a grudge,” he explained to the bewildered Vawtry.

  “A grudge? But why pick on me?”

  “To make you resentful of me, in hopes of creating ill will between us, I suppose,” Dain said. “That he could add to your miseries at the same time simply made the business more delightful for him,” Dain frowned. “He’s nothing more than a sneaking troublemaker. He hasn’t the nerve to seek revenge like a man. Which makes it all the more annoying that he has succeeded in his spiteful game far beyond his wildest dreams.” His frown deepened. “I might have had you hanged. And he would have laughed himself sick.”

  While Vawtry was trying to digest this, Dain took a slow turn about the small room, reflecting.

  “I believe I will pay your debts, Vawtry,” he said finally.

  “You’ll what?”

  “I will also make you a modest annual allowance,” Dain went on. “For services rendered.” He paused and folded his hands behind his back. “You see, my very dear, very loyal friend, I had no idea how valuable my icon was…until you told me. I had actually planned to give it to Mrs. Beaumont, in exchange for a portrait of my wife. Jessica had told me how much Mrs. Beaumont admired the icon. I thought it would be a more pleasing reward to the artist than mere coins.” Dain smiled faintly. “But no portrait, even by the brilliant Leila Beaumont, is worth twenty thousand quid, is it?”

  Vawtry had finally caught on. His battered face was creasing into a smile.

  “Naturally, you will write to Beaumont, thanking him for sharing the information,” Dain said. “It would be the polite thing to do. And naturally, as your very dear friend, he will be unselfishly delighted that you were able to profit from his wisdom.”