The Ruin of a Rake

by Cat Sebastian

  Julian wanted to say that if she indeed chose to behave abominably, she had gotten off to a rollicking start. Instead he paced over to the hearth and started poking at the fire. “We had a bargain,” he said without turning around. We were friends, was what he wanted to say. We were allies, until Courtenay interfered.

  “I held up my end of the bargain. I married well.” She broke off into an anxious laugh. “So well, my husband has kept the diameter of the globe between us in order to let me spend my fortune in peace. There’s no reason I shouldn’t live out the rest of my days doing precisely as I please.”

  He never knew what to say when Eleanor alluded to her marriage. That brought them too close to discussing the actual terms of their bargain, and Julian wasn’t certain he was equal to that. “What about me?” he asked. Damn the plaintive note that had crept into his voice.

  “What about you, Julian? Everyone considers you the consummate gentleman.” Julian was not certain whether he only imagined a trace of irony on considers. “You don’t need my cooperation anymore.”

  He would always need her. “So you’ve decided to become a demondaine,” he retorted, because it was easier to be rude than it was to be honest about how abandoned he felt, how much he wished everything could go back to the way it had been a few months ago. “I came this morning because Tilbury sent word that your servants were giving notice and your household was in shambles.”

  “You can see for yourself that isn’t the case. Tilbury exaggerates. But if you’re so eager to be helpful, then there’s a favor you could do for me.”

  Julian wanted to leap at the chance to be useful, to be busy, to be at all relevant to Eleanor. “Anything,” he said.

  “It’s Courtenay—”

  “No.”

  Eleanor sighed. “The Brigand Prince has been the final nail in the coffin of his reputation.”

  “I should have thought that Courtenay’s reputation was long dead and buried. Well beyond the point of coffins and nails.”

  “You know how it is when people see a thing in print. They take it as the word of God.”

  “The book doesn’t exactly specify that it’s about Courtenay,” Julian said, focusing his attention on the swirling pattern of the carpet. While he didn’t quite like the idea of people believing all the nonsense in that silly novel, seeing Courtenay in Eleanor’s study this morning, in disordered evening dress and rumpled hair, and having quite clearly spent the night, he felt that the man deserved everything that was coming to him.

  “It hardly needs to, and you know it. The trouble is that Lord Radnor read The Brigand Prince and now won’t let Courtenay see his nephew.”

  “Radnor is one of your friends. Surely you can persuade him to your way of thinking,” Julian said doubtfully. “I can’t see that there’s much I can do about it.”

  “I’m very cross with him, but he only wants to keep Simon safe from what he thinks is a corrupting influence.”

  “I daresay Radnor has the right of it. If I had a nephew, I wouldn’t want him anywhere near Courtenay either.”

  “Well, you’re not in any danger of getting a nephew, are you?” Eleanor was nearly shouting, and when Julian gestured for her to lower her voice, she only got louder. “Courtenay has been a friend to me.” Julian resisted the urge to respond that the two of them seemed very friendly indeed. “He practically raised that child. And now he can’t even visit him. You’re always looking to interfere with things that aren’t your concern. Why can’t this be one of them? Why can’t you fix things for Courtenay?”

  It was becoming increasingly clear to Julian that Eleanor was beside herself. He desperately wanted to suggest to her that she leave London and spend a few weeks at some quiet seaside resort that catered to overwrought gentlewomen. But he knew his sister far too well to make so disastrous a suggestion. “I’m afraid I can’t—”

  “Yes, you can,” she interrupted. “You’re invited everywhere, you’re acquainted with everyone. Bring him about with you. Let people see that he’s harmless.”

  Julian nearly reared back in astonishment. “Bring him about with me,” he repeated in tones of incredulity. “Like a pet monkey or a parrot?”

  “Let him borrow some of your respectability. Let a bit of your polish rub off on him.”

  Julian wanted to protest that this wasn’t how respectability worked. He had spent years acquiring the shine of gentility that one usually had to be born with. But the truth was that he had helped himself to other people’s respectability—he had finagled invitations and then gradually insinuated himself into higher and higher social circles. He had borrowed and stolen and finally hoarded up respectability until now he had more than he knew what to do with.

  “What, do you expect me to get him vouchers to Almack’s? Nothing doing, Eleanor.”

  She appeared to seriously be considering the question. “No, perhaps not Almack’s—”

  “Not anywhere. I’ve worked too hard to throw my good name away by spending time with the likes of Lord Courtenay. You have your title even if you choose to consort with every rake and scoundrel in Christendom.” Without his good name, Julian was a merchant from the colonies, a man with tastes that wouldn’t bear looking into. Eleanor knew this. And she was asking him anyway.

  “For me, Julian,” Eleanor said, and now she was almost begging.

  “A bit rich to ask me to parade your lover around town. Bad ton, Eleanor.”

  “He’s not my lover,” she sniffed, “but I thank you for your concern for my virtue, brother.”

  “I don’t give a damn about your virtue. I care about whether you’re happy.” And it was true, he realized. He’d rather his sister not be the subject of malicious gossip, but more than that he was worried about her. “Dash it, Eleanor. What am I supposed to think with all this going on?” He gestured vaguely to indicate the house and its inhabitants. “You’ve, ah, had a bit of a turnabout in the past few months.”

  She had a smudge of ink on her jaw, and he wanted to wipe it away, the way he used to when they were young and ambitious. “Courtenay and his friends are amusing. They sing and play charades and tell droll stories. They fall in love and fall out of love and when I’m near them I feel alive. You won’t begrudge me that, will you?”

  When she put it like that, he wouldn’t begrudge her anything. She was his older sister, his best friend, his accomplice, and more than anything he wanted to make things right with her. He wanted things to go back to the way they used to be, the way they were supposed to be, but if that wasn’t possible he’d settle for whatever she was offering. She had the upper hand in this negotiation.

  If helping her lover, or whoever Courtenay was to her, was what she required, then he would agree. “All right,” he conceded. “I’ll help him.”

  Before Courtenay reached the kitchen stairs, a door swung open. It was Eleanor’s dull brother, a prim sort of fellow who always looked at Courtenay as if he were a fly in the pudding. Courtenay knew the type well: stuffy, smug, and terribly concerned about what everybody else thought about him.

  Courtenay didn’t have the patience for this. He wanted to settle things with Eleanor’s cook, get some sleep, and . . . well, that was as far as his planning took him. Surely Medlock had someplace else to be. His club. A middling tailor. Some kind of chapel. Whatever normal gentlemen did with their time, and which Courtenay had never bothered with—and had never been asked to participate in.

  “Come in here.” Medlock gestured imperiously to an open door. “Please,” he added, and somehow made it sound like an insult.

  Everything about Medlock seemed calculatedly bland: neither handsome nor ugly, neither tall nor short, neither dark nor fair. His hair fell in the sad territory between brown and blond, his shrewd eyes were an unremarkable gray brown. His features were sharp, except for his mouth, which had a hint of incongruous softness when it wasn’t twisted into a grimace of irritation.

  Courtenay followed him, expecting to find Eleanor within. But the room was empt
y. “Alone at last,” he murmured suggestively, because it was amusing to watch Medlock get flustered and annoyed. He leaned in close and raised an insinuating eyebrow. “Be sure to turn the key in the—”

  “Save your breath. I’ll pretend you’re saying the foulest things imaginable and you can rest assured that I’m revolted,” Medlock said. “We’ll save ourselves a good deal of trouble.”

  Courtenay had no intention of doing that. He much preferred to keep Medlock in a lather. Otherwise the plumpness of those lips might give him ideas, and Julian Medlock—straitlaced, officious, and Eleanor’s brother—was the last human on earth about whom he wished to have ideas. “Anything else you’d like to fantasize about with me, Mr. Medlock?” Really, it was too easy. What the fellow needed was a good hard rogering. Courtenay would lay four to one odds on that being precisely the sort of thing Medlock fancied, not that Courtenay was going to do a damned thing about it. At least not in England. Being pilloried would do nothing to help his present state. There were plenty of law-abiding ways for him to slake his lust, thank God.

  “Eleanor wants me to take you about,” Medlock said in a rush, the words all bleeding into one another.

  “Pardon?”

  “My sister has asked me to bring you about with me.” He spoke the words as if they tasted bad. “Go riding in the park, that sort of thing.”

  Courtenay took a full step backwards, as if Medlock were ill with some contagion. “Why the devil would I want to do a thing like that?”

  Medlock—no hint of softness in his mouth now, thank God—answered from behind gritted teeth. “She is under the impression, misguided though it may be, that if I lend you my countenance, you could achieve a small margin of respectability.”

  His countenance? Had Courtenay ever heard anything so pompous? “Good God. Am I supposed to want that?” He scanned the room for the brandy bottle and found it on the mantelpiece. His hand had closed around its neck before he had quite made up his mind to have a drink.

  “Yes. Because,” Medlock went on, in the exasperated manner of one speaking to a foreigner or a child, “Lord Radnor might grant you permission to see your nephew if you weren’t entirely a social pariah.”

  At the mention of his nephew, Courtenay released his grip on the bottle. It had been months since he had seen Simon. When he had first arrived in England, things had looked promising enough—he had taken Simon to Astley’s, then to Tattersall’s. It had almost been like old times. But then Simon had returned with Radnor to the arse end of Cornwall and that blasted book had come out. Radnor’s secretary sent Courtenay an infuriatingly proper letter suggesting that Courtenay take himself as far away from Simon as humanly possible until the scandal died down. It was heavily implied that the scandal would die down at some point coincidental with Courtenay’s death.

  Courtenay had no recourse, either legal or moral. He had given up the matter as a lost cause and tried not to think about Simon—with the predictable result that any towheaded child he caught a glimpse of reminded him of his nephew. Now that Medlock was presenting him with an actual plan to bring Simon back into his life, Courtenay was ready to agree to nearly anything.

  “And you think that spending time with you would rehabilitate my reputation. Because everyone is so fond of you. Everyone likes you so very much.”

  Courtenay was simply trying to follow Eleanor’s logic. She was the genius, he a mere acolyte. It would have been helpful if she had kept him apprised of her intentions, however brilliant and convoluted, before involving her self-righteous brother. But for whatever reason, Medlock took offense. His spine visibly stiffened and his chin tilted up.

  “It doesn’t matter in the least bit whether anybody likes me,” Medlock said, in about as sniffy a voice as Courtenay had ever heard from a grown man. “What matters is that they respect me.”

  Courtenay was about to tell Medlock where he could shove his respectability when a kitten tumbled off a nearby table and onto Medlock’s boot.

  Medlock made a noise somewhere in between a squeak and a cough. “Don’t scratch that boot. Naughty!” Medlock was wriggling in a way that Courtenay might have found highly interesting under other circumstances. “Oh dear, and there’s another one under the settee.”

  “There are six,” Courtenay said blandly.

  “Six!” Medlock looked scandalized. Courtenay had no idea there was a limit to the number of cats a decent person could acquire. But Medlock seemed like the type of person who would have up-to-date information about this sort of thing, so Courtenay was prepared to defer to his greater knowledge.

  “This is Eleanor’s cat room.”

  Medlock blinked. “Her—oh, never mind.” He looked like he dearly wished to express himself on the topic of cat rooms. “Where in heaven’s name have they all come from?” he asked, finally grabbing the kitten by the scruff of its neck and holding it aloft.

  “Well,” Courtenay said, glad to have the chance to reclaim the upper hand, “they do come about in the usual way. A mother cat and a—”

  “Stop!” Medlock looked both mortified and furious. Evidently even allusions to feline fornication were enough to discompose him. Courtenay would keep that in mind.

  Courtenay reached for the kitten that Medlock was presently dangling from his fingertips. “They don’t mean any harm by it,” he went on, as if oblivious to Medlock’s consternation. “It’s just in their nature.” As he took hold of the animal, his fingers brushed Medlock’s, and he knew he didn’t imagine the frisson of awareness that passed over Medlock’s face.

  “They . . . what? Oh, never mind.” Medlock seemed to recover himself. “Meet me tomorrow night at the opera.”

  He left before Courtenay could object to these plans.

  All Courtenay knew was that if he were going to spend time with Medlock, he’d need to do his best to keep the man cranky and irritated. Otherwise he might start getting ideas, and once Courtenay started getting ideas, it was only a matter of time before he acted on them. And from there, everything would go to hell, because that’s what it tended to do. He’d lose the only real friend he had in this blasted country and throw away his last remaining chance to see Simon. No, he really needed to keep Julian Medlock at arm’s length.

  Chapter Three

  “You’ve heard about my sister, I suppose?” Julian took a nonchalant sip of tea while keeping his gaze fixed on Lady Montbray’s face.

  Julian would never get over the strangely illicit thrill of being granted access to the drawing rooms of people like Lady Montbray, people who had titles and pedigrees stretching back centuries and money from vague sources that nobody ever mentioned.

  It felt like an accomplishment but also—and surely this said no favorable things about Julian’s character—deliciously fraudulent, even though the drawing room belonged to somebody he had called a friend for years. Well, perhaps not a friend. He wasn’t entirely certain that he had friends, apart from Eleanor, and even that seemed doubtful these days. Friendship and rampant social climbing did not mix. Or more to the point, friendship and Julian did not mix: he was cold and guarded, composed of layers upon layers of secrets, each painted over with a polite lie. That was the way he liked it: he preferred the smooth, sleek varnish of falsehood to the unpleasant truths beneath. He didn’t want to think about the torpor of helpless days confined indoors, nor about sisters with troubling new appetites for vice. Why the devil would he invite a person into his life to get a closer look at precisely the things he avoided dwelling on? That was what friends were, people who could look at one’s inner nastiness the way Eleanor looked at pond scum under her microscope. No thank you.

  He smoothed his hand down his waistcoat—dove-gray silk embellished with only the most tasteful suggestion of a stripe—and waited for Lady Montbray’s response.

  Lady Montbray looked momentarily as if she might deny any knowledge of Eleanor’s recent foray into disrepute. When she spoke, she looked at Julian with the shrewdness of a card player trying to understand why a
n opponent had put down an unexpected hand. “I had always thought that if Lady Standish wished to disgrace herself,” she said slowly, “she’d do it by wearing trousers in public or setting fire to her house during one of her scientific misadventures. I certainly hadn’t expected Lord Courtenay to figure into it.”

  Julian sighed with unfeigned relief. A lesser person might have made him explain the entire mess in excruciating, incriminating detail. “I knew you’d understand. Nobody could have expected Courtenay to be in England, much less to have taken up with Eleanor.”

  “I take it they are . . .” She decorously let her voice trail off into polite vagueness.

  “It hardly matters.” No answer Julian gave would stop gossip from circulating, and besides, one never looked more ridiculous than when protesting that salacious gossip was untrue. It spoilt everyone’s fun.

  Lady Montbray’s deceptively innocent eyes grew bright with suppressed mirth. “I should think it matters a good deal to her. Is he as handsome as his portraits?”

  Courtenay had left England when Lady Montbray was still in the schoolroom. She and Julian had both had their first London season six years ago: she as the wealthy and marriageable daughter of an earl and he as the heir to a shipping fortune and brother to a newly married peeress. Neither of them had met Courtenay before his exile, but the stories of his misdeeds had been whispered by ladies behind fans and celebrated by gentlemen in smoky clubs.

  “I daresay he is,” Julian acknowledged. He was assailed by the image of Courtenay sprawled in the chair in Eleanor’s study. Handsome hardly covered it. Julian felt about Courtenay’s looks the way radicals thought about money: that it was deeply unfair and problematic for one person to possess such a disproportionate share. “His hair is shockingly long. Almost to his shoulders.” It was almost as if he wanted everyone to know he didn’t hold himself to decent standards.