House of Cads (Ladies of Scandal Book 2)

by Elizabeth Kingston

  She remembered his face at the ball when they had first met, and how mortified he had been, the way the purple crept up his neck. That was not fake. The way he had looked at those paintings at the exhibition, too – that was not a lie. And he had treated Dahlia very honorably, really.

  “He does not seem to me like a monster,” she said. “Has he done anything so unforgivable?”

  “No indeed, madame. Those men who wish to invest have not yet given over any money, and he does not live on credit, nor leave a string of debts in his wake. As I say, it is only very suspicious.”

  “Well then.” She sat up straighter as she came to the conclusion that she must confront Mason with this, just as she had done when she discovered he was engaged. Maybe the surprise of it would cause some more truth to spill out of him. It was far more palatable than the supposedly civilized method of spying and bribing for information.

  “I will put my guard up. Thank you for coming, Mr. Meeks. You did not misjudge. I will send word to you if I learn anything more.”

  “As shall I, madame.”

  Chapter Ten

  While Mason waited for her that night, he re-created bits of her on paper. To leave evidence of this little indulgence was unthinkable, so he only let the shape of her appear for a moment before disguising her as something else. The line of her throat when she threw her head back in passion became a river that ran down a narrow hill, and the sweep of her collarbone was transformed into a vine. Her knee he turned into the face of a little fox, and the tender flesh of her inner thigh became its soft tail curled around its body. He drew her mouth, open and panting, swollen with kisses, a lock of hair curling at her chin – but then made himself stop before adding more details and depth. He could get every tiny crevice on the surface of her lips just right, he was sure of it.

  He turned it into a flower instead. He was busy transforming the curl of hair against the line of her jaw into a leaf around a stem, and giving up hope that she would visit him tonight as promised, when he heard her at the panel.

  She knocked lightly, which was so unexpected that he wondered if it could possibly be someone else. He turned the drawings face down on the desk before carefully approaching the panel. There was no way to open it, and it locked from her side – an arrangement he’d call unfair if secret doors had anything to do with fairness or logic. Just as he was debating whether to whisper something at the wall or knock in return, she pushed it open.

  There was no eagerness in her, no enthusiastic embrace as there had been hours ago. She just stood and looked at him thoughtfully. All through the evening he’d felt her watching him, careful to never meet his eye as she huddled with Dahlia in a corner of the drawing room after dinner. He had told himself she was exercising discretion to keep the other guests from suspecting a romance between them, which would inevitably lead to talk about her past.

  But now she finally met his eye. It was more than just discretion. He couldn’t guess what, but he knew enough to be wary of whatever was going on behind the perfect blue of those eyes. He gave her his warmest smile.

  “Just passing by, or will you stop in for a while?”

  He gestured wide to invite her into the room, and she stepped in. She left the panel wide open, and he glimpsed her darkened room beyond before turning back to watch her. Her dressing gown was tied securely and she wore stockings and shoes – signs that she was here to do no more than talk. He tried not to be so disappointed. Of his favorite things to do with Marie-Anne, talking was a close second to making love with her. But it was still second.

  She crossed to the desk where she looked at the face-down stack of drawings without turning them over. It was almost like she was looking for something, the way she slowly took in all the details of the room. A little prickle of suspicion ran up his neck. She was up to something, no doubt about it.

  “A bundle of mischief,” he mused aloud. He leaned against the mantel and watched her turn to him, her brows raised in question. “It’s the first thing I thought when I saw you at that ball, in your fashionable gown with your respectable friends, trying to look like you’re not full of surprises. But you are.”

  “Me, I am full of surprises?”

  He nodded. “You’ve got one right now. Go on and let it loose, I’m braced and ready.”

  For a moment – just the barest hint of a moment – he thought she might step forward and kiss him, or pull off her dressing gown. But the devilish spark that had appeared was gone in a blink. She watched him very closely, which was every bit as alarming as it was thrilling.

  “It is a surprise for me too,” she said, “To find that I still like you very much even after I learn you are worse than a cad. You are…what? An impostor, maybe? A fake. A fraud.”

  He felt his face instinctively arrange itself into an expression of polite confusion. “I’m a fraud?”

  It was pure reflex, his mouth buying time while his brain began sifting through the dozen plausible stories that were always ready and waiting to be deployed. But which to use would depend on what she said next, how much she knew.

  “Yes, a faux businessman. Or I think maybe there is a business, but it is not how you describe. You are a liar, Mr. Mason.”

  He held his perplexed look but as he should have predicted, she did not react in the tried and true ways. Even adding a hint of injury to his expression did not cause her to show doubt, and women so reliably apologized when faced with a man’s bruised ego. The usual rules did not seem to apply to Marie-Anne de Vauteuil.

  “Go on,” he urged her. “I’m interested to hear more.”

  She considered him a long while as he did his best to hold her gaze and look innocent. It was something of a stalemate until finally there was a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes. It was followed by tell-tale signs of doubt: the quick glance away, her tongue darting out to wet her lips, her hands clasped briefly together. What a relief. He could work with doubt.

  “I think about you too much,” she said quietly. “From the first time we met, you know? Always I am hoping to make you laugh. I am too happy when you look at me, and too sad when you do not. You walk in the room and I forget a little how to breathe. Already you make me a little foolish, Mason. Please do not lie and make me a fool.”

  It was like a punch to the gut. The truth. It was the perfect card to play, except for the fact that she wasn’t playing.

  He could still lie. There were a hundred different illusions to spin. But she made him forget how to breathe a little, too.

  He dropped his eyes to the floor. “How did you find out?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I don’t suppose it does.” He found it hard to look at her, though he really didn’t want to look anywhere else. If it was the last he’d see of her, he’d rather take in as much as he could. He wondered if he should slip out now in the dead of night, or wait until dawn to make his way back to London. “Have you told our hosts yet?”

  “I have told no one.” When he did not hide his surprise, she shrugged. “I have thought about it all this evening, and still I cannot make myself care that you have no timber business in America, or any money in the banks of London.”

  It must have been through Summerdale, somehow, if she knew about his banking habits. But that was far from the most interesting bit of information here. He crossed his arms and frowned a little and, incredibly, fought against telling her she was crazy.

  “Full of surprises,” he muttered. “Now why don’t you care?”

  “Why should I care that you lie to all of London society?” She lifted her shoulder in another shrug. “Bah, society. I care for them as little as they have cared for me. They spat on me. Even now, I know they only tolerate me because I have an important friend who tells them they must respect me. But they will return to spitting on me again, if they are given the chance.”

  She spoke of it the same way she had spoken of the insults the Shipleys had hurled at her – casual and detached, like she was discussing the weather on an
unexceptional day. He had the most absurd urge to take her hand and run with her away from this place, laughing into the night. Maybe they could go to her little village. Sensible, decent people were probably thick on the ground there.

  “If you don’t care, then why in the hell are you all the way over there? And with so many clothes on?”

  She gave him an exasperated look. “You will please stop insulting me with this pretending. You know very well why I do not throw myself into your arms when I learn you are a lie. It is a very elaborate deception. I hope it is not meant to harm – but this is only a hope. So you must tell me why you do it.” She frowned and stroked her fingertips across his dinner jacket, which was draped carefully on the chair. “And where you get the money for such fine clothes.”

  He only considered misleading her for the tiniest moment, and only because it would be so easy to call it another misunderstanding. She would be perfectly willing to believe that, like his engagement, he had bumbled into the situation. But it was an easy impulse to reject. He liked her too much. Even more, he loved this feeling of them being on the same side.

  He took a deep breath and nodded at the papers on the desk. “Turn them over.”

  She did. Her expression lightened when she saw the first page, covered in disparate drawings of foxes and flowers and vines that were really pieces of her in disguise. She liked it. A warmth spread through his chest as she smiled in pleasure at it. Then she frowned again. “Keep looking,” he prompted. “The others.”

  The next was a page filled with trial sketches, a face at many different angles and in a few different styles. She blinked at it in surprise and sat down at the desk, where she put it aside to look at the next sketch – the same face, in its final and polished version.

  “It is Ravenclyffe. But how…” She looked confused and not a little impressed. “You have drawn him so differently, but still it is him every time. C’est une magie, I would never know all are from the same hand.”

  He grinned at that. “No need to flirt, darling. I’m already a little foolish about you, too.”

  She bit her lip prettily as she blinked at the drawing in her hand. He wanted to kiss her senseless again, all the more because he knew she wanted the same. Here they were, admittedly crazy about each other and doing nothing about it. Decency was a strange thing.

  “Keep going.” He nodded again at the drawings she held. “The next page.”

  It was the most comical of the sketches. It showed Ravenclyffe being laced into a corset by three servants, one with a foot braced against the duke’s rear end and the other two with the corset strings over their shoulders as they strained in the opposite direction, as though they were hauling a barge. She let out a faint snort of laughter and went to the next page, which showed Ravenclyffe comparing his ridiculously elaborate snuff box to Lord Huntingdon’s.

  “This one – the style is familiar.” She moved her finger in a circle around his face. “You sell these to the papers?”

  “We are the papers. My partner writes the stories and I provide the illustrations. The printer tells me there’s more and more interest in buying the prints separately, but most of the money comes from the weekly pamphlets we produce.” He plowed ahead with it. Better to get it all out before she reacted, while she still just sat there looking. “Freddy – my partner, he’s not exactly accepted in the circles where the best scandals happen. So I invented someone they’d let close. It sells better, when you’re the first to know the latest news.”

  She dropped the pages suddenly, as though they burned her, and looked up at him with the beginnings of anger. “You mean gossip. You lie so you can be close enough to hear the rumors, and then you print them.”

  “It’s usually completely true,” he assured her. “Or as close to the truth as we can get. And it’s nearly always about these superior society types.”

  “Who?” she demanded, all trace of good humor gone. “Who else besides Ravenclyffe and Mr. St. James? It is you who drew him at the opera to spread gossip about Phyllida. I saw the pamphlet only today. It was this same style, I recognize it.” She was definitely angry now. “Who else have you made into a mockery?”

  He held up his hands in a calming gesture. “None of your friends. This week we’ll print that Dahlia is rumored to be engaged to Releford, but that’s not mocking anyone. Hell, it’ll probably even do some good for her sisters. And St. James – he was nobody until we called him a libertine, I promise it’s profited him as much as us–”

  She slapped a hand onto the desk. “Do not tell me it is charity!” She stood, color high and eyes bright. “There is money in the mockery. You think I do not know? I have lived this! And I have seen far worse than the little jokes they made about me so long ago, much worse. To pay for your very fine hotel and your gentleman’s clothes you must have ruined many people, I think.”

  “Ruin?” he scoffed, incredulous. “What does it ruin, Marie-Anne? Some lady doesn’t get invited to her favorite ball or some lord gets turned away from his club. That’s ruination for these people, a little pointing and laughing. It’s only their pride that gets hurt. They don’t lose their homes or their wealth. They aren’t thrown into the gutter to beg for their dinner, and you know it. You know how they make their fortunes off the backs of the people they spit on for entertainment, so please spare me an appeal to their sensitive souls. Ruin is what they do to other people.”

  Her jaw clamped shut as she took a few rapid breaths, considering. He passed the time in wondering when he had grown so vehement on the subject. It was true he didn’t do this for charity. Or as a misguided stab at justice, for that matter. But he liked it for more than just the money.

  Marie-Anne gave an abrupt nod, conceding a little.

  “It is true what you say, most of the time. But not always. You think I have lived in my little village so long, counting my few coins, because gossip does not harm?”

  “The gossip did that, did it? Not the Shipleys?” he asked. “From what I can tell, it’s never the talk that does it. It’s the people who don’t stand by you when you get talked about, they’re the ones that do the damage. ”

  Her lips pressed together. “Very well, but you must believe me that to put it in the papers makes it worse for some people. I have seen it wound very deeply. There are some who do not deserve it.”

  “Maybe not. But I won’t lose any sleep over the Duke of Ravenclyffe being laughed at by all of London.”

  She sat slowly down, calm again as she looked at the drawings on the desk. “This was your business in America too?” She gave a startled look, a thought occurring to her. “You are really from America, aren’t you? Or is New York a lie, too – and this Kentucky.”

  He couldn’t stop the smile that tugged at his lips. He loved how she said Kentucky. “That’s not a lie. I grew up in Kentucky, and the Indiana Territory too. Then I ran to Philadelphia and Boston and New York.” He didn’t want to tell her everything. There was too much, and very little of it was the same kind of honest poverty that her own young life had been. Best stick to the relevant sins. “I worked on the docks, mostly, unloading cargo. Shifting barrels in warehouses and taverns, wherever I could get work.”

  “The muscle.” Her eyes lingered on his shoulders and chest, shown in all their coarse glory in the loose shirt. “It is not from cutting trees.”

  “I’ve cut some trees in my time. But I never owned acres of land, or a timber business. In Boston, I started drawing caricatures. It was an honest way to get a little extra money, for a change. Then a man from a New York paper said I could make more there.” He shrugged. “So that’s what I did for a couple years. Used four different styles, and sold to every paper that would pay.”

  “This has made you a little wealthy?”

  A rueful laugh escaped him. “It made me a little less poor for a while, that’s all. It was just starting to take off when I had to leave. It was political work,” he explained, hoping she wouldn’t want a blow by blow account of New York pol
itics and all the feathers he had ruffled there. “I made the wrong men angry. Freddy had seen my drawings, knew someone at the New York paper. He wrote to say he thought I’d do very well for myself in London. So here I am.”

  She examined him, sitting back in her chair a little. “And you do very well for yourself, as you say. Well enough to live as a gentleman.”

  “By the skin of our teeth.” He looked down at his very fine boots. They cost more money than he’d ever spent on anything in his life. Every time he sneezed, he checked to be sure they weren’t somehow scuffed or damaged beyond repair. “It takes a lot of investment, to turn me into a wealthy-looking man. We only started to turn a profit a few weeks ago.”

  She leaned forward, elbows on the desk, eyes closed, and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Later he would try to draw her in exactly this attitude. Portrait of a Disenchanted Woman, he’d call it. He wondered if it was disappointment at his lack of wealth, or at his lies.

  “Why did you not simply marry Dahlia, if you have no scruples?” she asked him. “She would bring some money. Enough that you would not have to work on docks. Maybe the same as you would make from these papers.”

  He leaned his head back against the wall and gave another humorless laugh. “Well, I could say it’s because I’m really not a cad, but that’s being overly kind to myself. I’m just a different kind of scoundrel. I wanted money, not a wife. That’s the game: get the money and get out, try not to get tangled up in the law. A marriage is about as entangled in the law as you can get.”

  She did not reply, and he tried to think of something to say that would steer the conversation away from this line of questioning. Get the money and get out and on to the next thing, the next place, the next game. It was how things worked, the only way he knew how to keep going. But now he wondered for the first time where it would ever end, and if he wanted it to. She seemed likely to ask him exactly that, and he wasn’t ready to answer.

  All he knew for sure was that he didn’t want to go yet. He hadn’t had his fill of her – her smiles and her kisses and the taste of her and the way she said his name with her accent. The way she looked at him, like he was worth looking at. The thought that she might send him packing now that she knew about him was thoroughly depressing.