Never Judge a Lady By Her Cover: Number 4 in series (The Rules of Scoundrels series)

by Sarah MacLean

  She required his assistance for one thing and one thing only.

  Securing Caroline’s future.

  The door behind Asriel snapped open, revealing her daughter, lit from behind by a collection of blazing candles. “I thought I heard you.”

  “Why are you still awake?”

  Caroline waved a red leather book. “I cannot sleep. This poor woman! Her husband forces her to drink wine from her own father’s skull!”

  Asriel’s eyes went wide.

  Caroline turned to him. “I feel the same way. It’s no wonder she haunts the place. Though, to be honest, if it were me, I’d want as far away from it as possible.”

  Georgiana plucked the book from Caroline’s grasp. “I think we could find something more appropriate for bedtime reading than” – she read from the book’s cover – “The Ghosts of Castel Teodorico, don’t you?”

  “What would you suggest?”

  “Surely there’s a book of children’s poetry lying about?”

  Caroline rolled her eyes. “I am not a child.”

  “Of course not.” Georgiana knew better than to argue. “A novel? Including a noble steed, a shining castle, and a happy-ever-after?”

  Rolling eyes turned forthright. “I shan’t know if this one has a happy-ever-after unless I finish it. But there is a romance.”

  Georgiana’s brow raised. “The husband in question does not strike me as a viable hero.”

  Caroline waved a hand. “Oh, of course not him. He’s a proper monster. Another ghost. From two hundred years earlier, and they are in love.”

  “The two ghosts?” Asriel asked, his gaze falling to the book.

  Caroline nodded. “Through time.”

  “How inconvenient,” Georgiana said.

  “Thoroughly. They only appear together one night a year.”

  “And what do they do together?” Asriel asked. Georgiana turned surprised eyes on him, big as a house and silent as the grave – unless romantic novels were in discussion, apparently.

  Caroline shook her head. “It’s unclear. But apparently it’s quite scandalous, so I assume it’s some kind of physical manifestation of their passion. Though considering they are ghosts… I’m not sure how it works.”

  Asriel choked.

  Georgiana raised a brow. “Caroline.”

  Caroline grinned. “It’s just so easy to shock him.”

  “You are what is referred to as ‘precocious.’” She handed the book to Asriel. “And so you must be reminded that I am older, wiser, and more powerful. Go to bed.”

  The girl’s eyes sparkled. “What of my book?”

  Georgiana bit back a smile. “You may have it in the morning. Asriel will take excellent care of it in the meantime.”

  Caroline whispered to Asriel, “Chapter fifteen. We shall discuss it tomorrow.”

  Asriel grunted in feigned disinterest, but did not protest his receipt of the book.

  Georgiana pointed to Caroline’s bedchamber. “In.”

  The girl turned at the order, and Georgiana followed behind, watching as she climbed into bed, then perching on the edge of the bed, smoothing the linen coverlet over Caroline’s shoulders. “You realize that when you are invited to Society events —”

  Caroline groaned.

  “When you are invited to Society events… you cannot discuss physical manifestations of anything.” She paused. “And it’s best to avoid discussion of drinking of blood from skulls.”

  “It was wine.”

  “Let’s settle on no skull drinking of any kind.”

  Caroline signed. “Society events sound terribly boring.”

  “They’re not, you know.”

  Caroline turned surprise eyes on her mother. “They’re not?”

  Georgiana shook her head. “They’re not. They’re really quite entertaining if you’re…” she hesitated. If you’re welcome to them didn’t seem to be the appropriate finish to the sentence. Particularly since Caroline was fairly ruined. “If you’re interested in that sort of thing.”

  “Are you?” Caroline asked softly. “Interested in Society events?”

  Georgiana hesitated. She had been. She’d adored the few country dances to which she’d been invited. She could still remember the dress she’d worn to that first ball – the way the skirts had weighed heavy and lush around her. The way she’d played demure, lowering her gaze and smiling carefully every time a boy asked her to dance.

  Caroline deserved that memory. The dress. The dances. The attention. She deserved the breathlessness that came from a wild reel, the pride that came from a compliment on her coif. The increase in her heart rate when she met the beautiful blue gaze that proved to be her ruination.

  Dread pooled in Georgiana’s stomach.

  Caroline knew her past – knew she had no father. Knew that Georgiana was unmarried. And Georgiana assumed that Caroline knew the consequences of those things – that her reputation was blackened by association and had been since her birth. That she needed more than a mother and a motley collection of aristocrats with questionable reputations to save her. To garner Society’s approval.

  And yet, Caroline had never once acknowledged those truths. She had never – even in the frustrated moments a girl had with her mother – said a word to indicate that she resented the circumstances of her birth. That she wished for another life.

  But it did not mean she did not want it. And it did not mean Georgiana would not do everything she could to give it to her.

  “Mother?” Caroline prompted, bringing Georgiana back to the present. “Are you interested in Society?”

  “No,” she said, leaning down and kissing Caroline’s forehead. “Only in its secrets.”

  There was a long moment as Caroline considered the words before she finally said, all conviction, “Neither am I.”

  It was a lie. Georgiana had been a girl once, too, full of hope and ideas. She knew what Caroline dreamed of in quiet moments. In the dark of night. She knew, because she’d dreamed of the same things. Of marriage. Of a life filled with happiness and kindness and partnership.

  Filled with love.

  Love.

  The thought of the word came on a wave of bitterness.

  It was not that she did not believe in the emotion. She was not a fool, after all. She knew it was real. She’d felt it any number of times. She loved her partners. She loved her brother. She loved the women who had taken her in all those years ago, who had protected her even as she’d risked their safety – a duke’s sister, escaped and on the run. She loved Caroline more than she’d ever thought possible.

  And there had been a time when she’d thought she’d loved another. When she’d believed that the remarkable way he made her feel had made her invincible. When she’d thought she could conquer the world with the way she felt.

  That they could conquer the world together.

  She’d trusted it, that feeling. Just as she’d trusted the boy who had made her feel that way.

  And she’d been left broken.

  Alone.

  So, yes, she believed in love. It was impossible not to every time she looked into her daughter’s face. But she also knew the truth of it – that It destroyed. It consumed. It was the source of pain and fear, and it could turn infinite power into powerlessness. Could reduce a woman to a simpering girl on a balcony, taking the brunt of insult and shame in the infinitesimal hope that her pain might save someone she loved.

  Love was bollocks.

  “Good night, Mother.” Caroline’s words shook Georgiana from her reverie.

  She looked down at her daughter, blankets pulled up to her chin, somehow looking both young and far too old at the same time.

  Georgiana leaned down and pressed a kiss to her daughter’s forehead. “Good night, sweet girl.”

  She left the room, closing the door quietly behind her before turning to face Temple, now standing with Asriel in the hallway beyond. “What is it?”

  “Two things,” the duke said, all business. �
��First, Galworth is here.”

  The Viscount Galworth, in debt to his eyeballs to the Angel. She took the file Temple offered, looked inside. “Is he ready to pay?”

  “He says he has little to offer.”

  She raised a brow, paging through the file. “He has a town house, and acreage in Northumberland that earns him two thousand a year. Not so little.”

  Temple’s brows rose. “I didn’t know about the land.”

  “No one knows about the land,” she said, but it was Chase’s job to know more than the rest of the world about the members of The Fallen Angel.

  “He’s offered something else.”

  She looked up. “Don’t tell me. The daughter.”

  “Offered with pleasure, to Chase.”

  It was not the first time. Too often, the aristocracy had a disrespect for its daughters and a willingness to deliver them into the arms of unknown men with dangerous reputations. In Chase’s case, that particular package was never well received. “Tell him Chase is not interested in his daughter.”

  “I’d like to tell him to throw himself off a goddamn bridge,” the former bare-knuckle boxer said.

  “Feel free. But get the land first.”

  “And if he doesn’t agree?”

  She met his eyes. “Then he owes us seven thousand pounds. And Bruno should feel free to collect however he likes.” The hulking security guard enjoyed punishing men who deserved it. And most of the members of the Angel deserved it.

  Most of the members of the aristocracy deserved it.

  “It is also worth reminding him that if we find he’s planning to do anything but marry the girl off to a decent man, we’ll release the information on his throwing horse races. Tell him that, too.”

  Temple’s black brows rose. “It never fails to surprise me just how ruthless you can be.”

  She smiled her sweetest smile at him. “Never trust a woman.”

  He laughed. “Not you, at least.”

  “If he did not wish the information found out, he should not have used it to gain entrance to the club.” She moved to leave the room, but turned back. “You said two things.”

  He nodded. “You’ve a visitor.”

  “I’m not interested. Go yourself.” It would not be the first or the last time one of the other owners of the casino took a meeting meant for Chase.

  Temple shook his head. “Not Chase. He insists on Anna.”

  Neither would it be the first or last time that a man on the floor of the hell drank too much and called for Anna. “Who?”

  “Duncan West.”

  She caught her breath, hating the way the name rioted through her, as though she were a green girl. “What is he doing here?”

  “He says he is here for you,” he said, and she heard the curiosity in his tone.

  Matched it with hers. “Why?”

  “He did not say,” the duke said, as though she were dim. “He simply asked for you.”

  Perhaps it was the result of the melancholy she’d felt in Caroline’s room. Or perhaps it was because Duncan West had seen her at her weakest the prior evening and agreed to help her return to Society nonetheless. Or perhaps it was because she was so drawn to him – despite knowing better.

  Whatever the reason, Georgiana surprised herself. “Tell him I shall be with him presently.”

  She waited a quarter of an hour, taking a moment to make certain that her maquillage was perfectly applied. Satisfied with her outward appearance, Georgiana made her way through the web of passageways that connected her rooms to the main floor of the club, unlocking and relocking several doors carefully to ensure that no one could accidentally gain access to Caroline.

  When she opened the final door and was delivered onto the floor of the club, she released a long breath. There was something terribly freeing about playing the lightskirt, though playing wasn’t precisely the verb Georgiana would use to describe her masquerade as Anna. After all, when one had worn the silks and satins of a celebrated prostitute for years, one tended to embrace the role.

  Or, most of the role. Everything but the most obvious piece of it.

  She hadn’t planned to avoid that bit – after all, the horse was rather out of the barn when a woman had birthed a child. Neither was it a lack of opportunity – half of London’s male population had approached her at one point or another.

  It had simply never happened.

  Which served Georgiana well. With no men on the floor of the club able to recount their time with her, her legend had grown. She was known now as a skilled madam, protected by the owners of the club and more expensive than any mere member of The Fallen Angel could afford.

  And that legend had offered its own protection, giving her the freedom to move about the floor, to interact with members, and to play her part without fear of threat. No member of the club was willing to risk his membership for a taste of Anna.

  She stood at the center of the casino floor, loving the massive room filled with gamers and tables, cards and dice, wins and losses. Every inch of the place was hers, every corner in her dominion.

  It was a heady pleasure, this place of sin and vice and secrets – the throngs before her swayed in excitement, vibrating with desire and nerves and greed. London’s wealthiest and most powerful sat here night after night, money in their pockets and women in their laps, and played at chance, never knowing – or perhaps never acknowledging – that they would never beat the Angel. They would never win enough to reign here.

  The Fallen Angel had its monarch.

  It was the greed that kept them here – desperation for money, for luxury, for the win. Whatever club members wanted was theirs for the taking, often before they recognized the desire that ran hot within. And because of that, the club was marked the greatest in London’s history.

  As White’s and Brooks’s and Boodle’s were for public schoolboys, the Angel was for men. And to gain entrance to the club, they would reveal all their secrets.

  Such was the draw of sin.

  And it was a pretty, pretty draw.

  Her gaze landed on a collection of tables at the center of the casino floor, where roulette wheels spun in a blur of red and black, wagers strewn across green baize. It was her favorite place in the hell, in the middle of everything, where she could survey all she owned from its heart. She adored the sound of ivory balls on mahogany wheels, the clatter of the spin, the collective breath holding of the gamers at the table.

  Roulette was like life; its utter unpredictability made it immensely rewarding when it delivered a win.

  She turned slowly, searching the crowd for West, resisting the pounding of her heart, the excitement of the hunt for the man who held near-equal power in this room. She resisted, too, the way he made her feel, as though she’d met her match.

  She knew she should be nervous at his summons… but she could not resist the temptation he represented.

  Georgiana was bound by propriety around him.

  Anna, however… Anna could flirt. And she found she was looking forward to seeing the man again.

  The thought had barely come when she was captured from behind, heavy steel arms wrapping around her waist and lifting her clear off the floor. She resisted the urge to scream in surprise as a hot, drunken voice breathed at her ear, “Now, here’s a treat.”

  She was trapped against the man, on show for the entire floor of the club – a score of members, who lacked either the courage or the stupidity required to approach her, stood, mouths agape, watching. Not one came to her defense. She watched a croupier at a nearby hazard field reach beneath the table, to no doubt pull a cord that would ring a corresponding bell in any number of rooms abovestairs.

  Security summoned, Georgiana turned her head, craning to identify the large man who held her in his grasp. “Baron Pottle,” she said calmly, letting her weight fall dead in his arms. “I suggest you restore me to the earth before one of us is hurt.”

  He lifted her into his arms, feet in the air, skirts tumbling back to rev
eal ankles which received a collective leer before he said, “Hurting is not what I have in mind, darling.”

  She leaned away from his alcohol-laden breath. “Nevertheless, you shall be hurt if you don’t put me down.”

  “And who’ll do that?” he slurred. “Chase?”

  “Anything is possible.”

  Pottle laughed. “Chase hasn’t shown his face on the floor in six years, love. I doubt he’ll do it for you.” Prediction made, he leaned in. “And besides, you’ll like what I have in store for you.”

  “I highly doubt that.” She squirmed in his arms, but he was stronger than he looked, dammit. And the idiot drunken aristocrat was going to kiss her. He licked his lips and came closer even as she craned backward – but there was only so far a woman could escape when held in a man’s arms. “Baron Pottle,” she said, “this shan’t end well. For either of us.”

  The assembled crowd snickered, but no one came to her aid.

  “Come now, Anna. We’re both adults. And you’re a professional,” Pottle said, lips closer, a hairsbreadth from her. “I’d like a ride. It’s not as though I won’t pay you, and handsomely. And who’s going to stop me?”

  It was only then that Georgiana realized that, were she not who she was, with the protection of The Fallen Angel and all of its power behind her, no one would stop him. Women with her reputation, with her past, were not worth fighting for.

  And shockingly, it was that thought, and not the physical experience, that wreaked havoc. Security would come, she thought, trying to keep the thought alive as she fought the anger and frustration and humiliation of the moment.

  Pottle’s lips were on hers now. Two dozen so-called gentlemen watched, and not one willing to help.

  Cowards. Every one of them.

  “Release the lady.”

  Chapter 5

  … That said, fortune hunters might have cause to worry, as Lady G—’s charm and grace threaten to result in the ton forgetting her past and instead promising her a bright future…