Miss Benwick Reforms a Rogue

by Maggie Fenton

  He’d never felt so helpless, even when he’d stood in a jeering crowd at the Newgate gallows, watching the life leech from his mother’s eyes. He’d watched every moment of his mother’s agony, and it was as vivid to him now as it had been all those years ago—the curse of his eidetic mind. He never forgot anything.

  Of course, there was no revenge against the disease that had taken Freddie, but none of it would have ever happened—his mother's hanging, Freddie's miserable death, each and every tortured nightmare he’d had since—if not for Lord Kildale.

  The marquess would pay. Quite soon, if all went to plan.

  He already owned the marquess financially. He’d see just how superior Kildale felt after he’d seduced and ruined his only child—the only thing on earth the marquess seemed to value other than the gaming tables. It seemed as fitting a comeuppance as Julian could ever deliver to the man who’d destroyed his family.

  Though bedding the mollycoddled paragon that was the Lady Ambrosia was a daunting prospect. She would probably die of fright the moment he took his shirt off—if she even allowed him to. He’d had his share of aristocratic ladies, but none of them had been virgins with matrimony in mind. He heard that most of that sort kept their clothes on and the candles out. There was even talk of special bed sheets with discreet holes cut into them, though surely this was a load of bollocks. God, he hoped so.

  Lady Highbottom, his current houseguest, whose blood was as blue as Lady Ambrosia’s, seemed quite happy to forego any of that nonsense, however. He’d had to demand that she put her clothes back on quite a few times in the last couple of days. Though it had been amusing at first to have a lady like her panting after him like a bitch in heat, he’d grown weary of the game.

  Perhaps some special bed sheets wouldn’t go amiss in her case.

  The mere thought of Kildale sparked enough resolve inside for him to shake off the last of the melancholia that invariably gripped him on mornings like this. After abandoning Sir Wesley’s fribble of a cousin at the front of the castle—he’d have to sort that mire out with Bones immediately—he picked up his stride toward his room to change, determined to have a productive day in his workshop despite its inauspicious start.

  He would just have to drink more tonight and hope that his feet did not grow restless once more. But hope was in short supply where his peculiar affliction was concerned. The passage of time had not healed his brainbox. If anything, his nighttime jaunts were growing more frequent.

  He hoped he at least landed somewhere warmer and drier next time. And fribble free.

  He kicked in his bedroom door and yanked off his ruined linens. Striding naked across the room, he smirked inwardly at the memory of the Exquisite’s red cheeks and wandering eyes. Fawkes had not known what to do with himself in the face of Julian’s brawn. Poor fellow had probably never seen a real man before, having been surrounded by the soft, indolent bodies of the Upper Ten Thousand all of his life.

  Julian had half expected the fribble to swoon at one point, but the man had proven to have some backbone by the end of their little exchange. If he could manage to verbally spar with an irate Cockney as if they were having tea in the finest drawing room, Mr. Fawkes was more than his fine green jacket and namby-pamby footwear would suggest. Which was fortunate.

  The fribble would need his mettle if he were to survive at Arncliffe Castle—not that Mr. Fawkes was going to stay longer than it took the mail coach to pass back through Hebden. But even a night spent at the castle was not for the faint-of-heart, as had been proven by the parade of secretaries that had passed through these walls.

  Between his work and his plans to bring the marquess to his knees, Julian had no time to break in another milksop secretary who’d turn tail and run before a week had passed anyway. The last one had only lasted half a day.

  Julian tossed the smalls into the hearth and began to scrub off the worst of the mud with an old shirt and a pitcher of cold water. Satisfied with his wash, such as it was, he scavenged the room for something to wear. He found a half-clean pair of buckskins and a shirt with only two unidentifiable stains on the collar and pulled them on. His valet would have swooned…but he’d not seen that particular fellow in weeks.

  Just as he was stuffing his feet into his unadorned, untassled boots, Bones’ stout figure appeared at the door wearing yesterday’s clothes—a bad sign. His friend’s usual natty toilette looked a bit wilted around the edges, and his sharp agate eyes were ringed by dark shadows, as if he hadn’t slept all night.

  “An’ where the bleedin’ ‘ell ‘ave ya been?” Bones demanded, his accent as thick and unabashed as ever. Julian’s own had been muted from those hellish years he’d spent away at boarding school as a young lad. He’d not known how much those bumbrushers had beaten out of him until he’d returned to the rookery years later and could barely understand a word around him. It had been a horrifyingly disjointed experience to discover he no longer belonged in his own home. If he ever had to begin with.

  “Naked in a ditch, no thanks to you,” he said breezily. Bones didn’t look surprised by this news at all. “Where the bloody blazes have you been?”

  “Up all night wiv yer ‘ouseguests,” Bones muttered. “Thanks for that, by the way. Lady ‘ighbottom were deep in the laudanum. She were casting up ‘er bloody accounts in one of yer fine vases ‘til dawn.”

  “Is she alive?”

  “Was when I left.” Bones looked none too pleased about it.

  Julian wasn’t either.

  The Highbottoms’ extended visit was probably one of the least gratifying parts of his plan for the marquess. He’d spent months cultivating their company back in London—long, brain-numbing months he’d never get back. The viscount was, to put it in the nicest terms possible, a drunken lecher who’d already forced Julian into relocating most of the female staff to his London home for the duration, while his wife was never out of arms’ reach of either her “physic” or a member of the opposite sex.

  And from the way the viscount seemed ever so agreeable to Lady Highbottom's brazen attempts to seduce him, Julian had to wonder if it was some sort of social coup for one’s wife to bed a bit of rough like him. It seemed likely, given what Bones had been able to unearth about Highbottom's true character. The viscount would have given a Yorkshire sheep a good poke on a dare. Or his own mother. Or anything, animate or not, so long as it was thoroughly inappropriate.

  Julian’s skin began to crawl at the thought of the places Highbottom's diseased rod had been. One of those places was Lady Highbottom.

  Which meant…

  Julian shuddered, doubly glad he’d not taken the lady to bed, despite her unsubtle invitations. He didn’t need to add the pox to his list of problems.

  But he couldn’t send them away until they’d served their purpose. Julian intended to invite (i.e. gently coerce) the marquess and his daughter to stay at the castle when they returned to their country seat, and he needed the Highbottoms here when he did so.

  He may have despised them to the center of his black heart, but they were, alas, intimates of Kildale’s. If the marquess were to keep up appearances with his social set, he’d not be able to turn down an invitation to Arncliffe Castle without ruffling the feathers of two of the ton’s most malicious gossips, especially when his own estate was just a few miles away.

  But as the Highbottoms only seemed to come out at night, rather like bats, he was able to mostly forget about them during the day. And when they did deign to appear in his drawing room at the witching hour, he was usually too far into his cups to want to murder them. Much. But he vowed that if the viscountess tried to pinch his arse even one more time…

  “I have half a mind to take the blunderbuss to their arses,” he muttered.

  “Not if I do it first,” Bones retorted. “Sure ya doan want ta send the coves back to Lunnon now?”

  He leveled a hard look on his friend, and Bones flushed. “Jus’ asking, fer crying out loud,” he muttered. “I jus’ doan like it, is
all.”

  “So you’ve said.” Many, many times.

  “Aye, an I’ll say it again until ya bloody listen,” Bones railed. “The marquess’ll never let ya near ‘is daughter, no matter wot you’ve got ‘anging over ‘is head.”

  “You’ve never cared before what we did to Kildale.”

  Bones huffed. “Aye, a bit o’ blackmail, a bit o’ greasing the palms wiv ‘is creditors, is one fing. Matrimony is somefing else.”

  Matrimony indeed. Julian nearly snorted out loud. He hadn’t bothered to correct his friend’s assumption, and he didn’t correct it now. Perhaps it was a bit naughty, but he liked seeing Bones squirm. Usually it was the other way around. And the less anyone knew of his true intentions, the better. If it all went pear-shaped, he didn’t want to drag down anyone else with him, especially his oldest friend.

  “Why Bones, have you gone soft for poor Lady Ambrosia?” he teased.

  Bones flushed even more, his beetle brow knitting in a muddle of anger and chagrin. “Wot! No!” he sputtered. “I doan give a rat’s arse about ‘er. But I do about you, ya daft bastard. Kildale plays a dirty game, Jules. Let him any closer, ‘e’s liable to bite ya in the arse like the snake he is. ‘E won’t owe you a farthing should ya turn up dead.”

  “Worried you’ll lose your meal ticket?”

  “Worried I’ll lose my best mate, damn yer eyes,” Bones retorted, though his eyes were shifty. His friend’s concern wasn’t wholly over Julian’s safety. They’d both done far more dangerous things back in the rookery. As much as he tried to deny it, Bones was concerned about his pockets, and he’d never convince Julian otherwise.

  But he understood Bones’ concern—even shared it. Before the dust settled, the marquess was sure to pull something underhanded to try and worm his way out of the debt he owed. Murder was not out of the question for a coward like Kildale. But Julian didn’t care. He was too close to victory to stop now. “I’ve been wanting this for years, Bones. I’ll not stop just because you’ve lost your nerve.”

  Bones drew himself up in indignation. “I ain’t lost nofing. I just doan want ya hurt, is all.”

  If there was one thing that made Julian feel off kilter, it was his bullish best mate being sentimental. It was simply unnatural, and, Julian suspected, just another dirty trick in Bones’ campaign against his courtship of Lady Ambrosia.

  Some of Julian’s oldest memories were of Bones, playing with him outside the brothel when they couldn’t have been much older than three. It was the only bright spot in an otherwise miserable childhood. After he’d been sent away to school a few years later, however, Julian had never expected to see his friend again. He’d nearly forgotten Bones entirely by the time he’d found himself back in the rookery.

  But Bones had certainly remembered him when their paths had crossed once more. Julian had been in the middle of a brawl—he’d always been in the middle of a brawl in those days, hoping one would finish the job the typhus had failed to do—when his opponent had simply stopped fighting him and spoken his name. The haze of his rage had cleared enough for him to finally see the boy he’d once known in the barrel-chested bruiser he’d been fighting.

  Bones had seen Julian through those first few dark years. He’d forced Julian to survive the rookery when Julian had wanted to give up on life completely. And when Julian had clawed his way out of the gutter for good, Bones had been right there with him.

  The only thing they’d never agreed on over the years was Julian’s latest plan for the marquess. Bones had supported him in his quest to avenge his family to a point, if only to spur on Julian’s ambitions (and thus their growing fortunes). But he’d grown skittish of the whole enterprise ever since he’d taken it into his thick head that Julian intended to marry Lady Ambrosia.

  Bones should really know him better than that.

  “It’s almost over,” he said, feeling suddenly weary. He hated arguing with Bones. He especially hated arguing with Bones about this.

  “It woan ever be over if ya leg-shackle yerself to the daughter. But pay me no mind. What am I but yer best mate?” Bones fussed with the hem of his waistcoat and sniffed. “I fer one can’t wait until this business is finally done.”

  Julian couldn’t wait either, if only to send the Highbottoms to perdition.

  He finally succeeded in jamming his heels into his boots and shrugging into a jacket. His balls were half frozen from the elements, and he was still hung over from his failed attempt at oblivion the night before. But there was work to be done this day, and neither his scrambled brainbox, nor a fribble with a stick, nor a pair of debauched nobs was going to stop him from doing something worthwhile.

  Bones followed him out of his room and down the long medieval corridors toward the workshop in the south tower, his stockier legs working twice as hard to keep up with Julian’s long stride. Apparently, his friend was not done with his interrogation yet. “And by the way, who were that mincing fop I saw coming up the drive wiv ya?” he demanded.

  Julian was wondering when Bones would bring up Mr. Fawkes, for he was sure his cunning friend had known the minute the lad set foot on the property. Bones made it his business to know everything about everyone around him at all times—yet another reason he’d not corrected Bones’ assumption about his courtship of Lady Ambrosia. It was rare that he ever pulled the wool over his friend’s eyes, and he intended to savor it for as long as he could. The look on Bones’ face when he finally figured it out was sure to be priceless.

  “That is the secretary you hired. Behind my back.”

  Bones’ step faltered, then stopped altogether. Julian turned around to find Bones bent over, hands on knees, bracing himself against his loud guffaws. He waved a hand at Julian as he attempted to recover himself enough to speak. “That little peacock is Fawkes? Tha…that cravat! Those boots!”

  Julian smirked. Fawkes was rather a ridiculous peacock. “He’s taller than you,” he pointed out.

  “Aye, an’ about a stone soaking wet beneath all them fine articles,” Bones retorted, ignoring the jab.

  Julian decided to poke at the beast just a little bit more. “You’ll be asking after his tailor before the day’s over.”

  Bones’ already ruddy cheeks grew even ruddier, and his chuckling stopped. Julian crowed inwardly. He’d hit his mark. He’d wager his fortune that Bones had already been thinking about it—was probably secretly coveting the same foppish boots and puffed up cravat he’d been ridiculing not moments before.

  Bones had always put great stock in his appearance, even when they’d both spent most nights sleeping rough in the rookery. Julian suspected half the reason Bones had been so determined to become a rich man was just so he could afford a tailor. He’d warn Fawkes to guard his wardrobe if he thought any of it had a chance in hell of fitting over Bones’ big toe.

  “There ain’t nofing wrong wiv a man taking pride in the way ‘e presents hisself to the world,” Bones declared, smoothing down his jacket self-consciously. “You’d be well served to do the same.”

  His friend had been itching to dress him for years, but Julian would never allow it. He gained far too much enjoyment from the way Bones’ brow creased whenever he looked at Julian’s crumpled jackets and unfashionable buckskins—as if Julian’s poor toilette was an affront to all that was right and good in the world.

  It would never stop being hilarious. And much as he would like to witness for himself Bones and Mr. Fawkes in the same room together (he was a scientist, after all, and always keen to observe unusual phenomena), he really didn’t have the time to let this ridiculousness go any further.

  “I told you I was done with secretaries,” he said seriously. “And you went behind my back and hired one anyway.”

  Bones’ mouth set in a mulish line. “Sir Wesley hisself recommended Mr. Fawkes. ‘E’s his cousin, so I thought ‘e might be clever enough to keep up. You need help wiv your work, you can’t deny that.”

  Well, he’d certainly try. “And you think Mr. Fawkes can
provide that help?”

  Bones grimaced. “Poor little cull looks like a stiff wind’ll blow ‘im over,” he admitted grudgingly. “But that doan mean ‘e ain’t a clever sort like his cousin. ‘E could ‘elp organize that book you’ve been meaning to write for nigh on a decade now.”

  Bones knew just where to poke him back, it seemed. The Book was a very sore subject for him. His mind flashed to the mound of papers in the corner of his workshop, and he only barely contained a shudder of dread. It had been months—yes, fine, years—since he’d caught a glimpse of the desktop beneath that chaotic heap. He seriously doubted that Fawkes could tame that disaster any more than he’d been able to, much less understand a word of what he’d written to be of any use.

  “It’s not been a decade. And it’s written. Mostly. The little fribble’s more likely to be crushed beneath an avalanche of papers,” he said dismissively. “I don’t have any desire to explain to Sir Wesley how my manuscript killed his kin.”

  “Fine,” Bones grumbled, no doubt vexed at being stymied yet again in his quest to fill the coffers with the royalties the book would bring in.

  “Don’t fret like a broody hen, Bones. I’m still bloody rich, and so are you.”

  Bones didn’t look the least mollified. “There’s always more blunt to be made.”

  “I’ll finish the book.” One day, at any rate. “Besides, the engine is almost done.”

  Judging by the skeptical arch of his beetle brow, Bones didn’t believe him. “That’s wot ya said last week.”

  “It will be done,” he said firmly, daring Bones to push him further. “Have I ever steered us wrong? The money we make off this patent will make my present fortune look like a pittance.”

  Bones sneered. “If ya ever get round to making it work, what with yer courtship taking up all yer focus.”

  Oh, he was definitely not telling Bones his true plans now. “It is only more motivation to fill the coffers. I’ll need all the blunt I can get for my future wife. I’m sure Lady Ambrosia has expensive tastes. And don’t forget all of the children we’re going to have.” He barely kept a straight face.