The Ruin of a Rake

by Cat Sebastian

  “I understand that he’s in with a rather artistic set,” Lady Montbray offered. “Louisa Norton’s youngest son, I believe.”

  He nodded grimly. “And now Eleanor wants me to rehabilitate Courtenay’s reputation. I told her it wouldn’t be possible, of course.”

  She glanced at him over the rim of her teacup. “I should think not.”

  That was not precisely the reaction he had hoped for, even though it echoed his own doubts. He took another sip of tea. “I’ll give it my best, though. Eleanor dearly wants this.”

  A shadow crossed her face. “I see.” After all, she knew about misbehaving siblings. Her brother had been entangled in some or another sordidness—gambling away his fortune and consorting with low company, Julian gathered, although it had all been nicely hushed up—that led to the man not being widely received by people of quality, and instead living in a quiet sort of way. “But what’s in it for you?”

  He nearly flinched. “It’s not like you to be so mercenary.”

  “But it is like you, Mr. Medlock.”

  “Touché.” He felt his cheeks start to flame. These days, most people didn’t refer to his origins, at least not to his face.

  “That wasn’t an aspersion on your parentage, only a statement of fact. You aren’t one to hold your good name cheap, sister or no sister.”

  Medlock felt some of the tension drain from his shoulders. “Well, if I can clear Courtenay’s name a bit, then that will stop Eleanor from being tarnished by association, which in turn will help me.” He hesitated. “I do have a proposition that might interest you.”

  “Do you, now?” A fine blonde eyebrow slanted upwards.

  “Are you planning to attend the opera tomorrow?” When she didn’t immediately respond, he added, “I promise to make it worth your while.”

  She hesitated. “What would I wear? None of my opera gowns are in mourning colors.” She was supposed to be in her last months of mourning for the late Lord Montbray, but never had Julian seen a lady make such a halfhearted observation of mourning conventions. Today she wore a rose muslin day gown, not a stitch of black on her, nor even gray or lavender. Not that he could blame her; the late Lord Montbray hadn’t merited much in the way of mourning if half of what one heard about him had been true.

  And that was just the devil of it. Lady Montbray had been delighted when her old sot of a husband had decamped for foreign shores, and likely even happier when he broke his neck. When Julian and Eleanor had left India and established themselves in London, Julian had expected Eleanor’s husband to follow. But when he didn’t, Eleanor hadn’t seemed too cut up about it, so Julian assumed she was one of the many ladies who were only too glad when their husbands made themselves scarce. Julian realized now that he had been wrong. Eleanor was unhappy, and likely regretted ever having come to England and wished Julian at the devil. It had been six years, though, six years of not talking about her happiness or her marriage or what she wanted, and he couldn’t simply waltz up to her and ask her whether he had ruined her life. But it had also been six years of improving health for Julian, six years of gradually getting used to the idea that he wasn’t going to die anytime soon, and six years of the sneaking suspicion that Eleanor had paid the price for his life. No, he couldn’t talk to her about this. It was always best not to ask questions if one didn’t want to know the answer, best not to acknowledge problems that had no solutions.

  “You have your white silk,” he said, glad to have a problem he could solve. “That’s perfectly proper.”

  “And you’ll escort me? I take it that’s your proposition? That’s good of you, Julian, but—”

  “No. I’m going with Lord Courtenay.”

  “Goodness,” she breathed. “I’ll be sure to polish off my opera glasses so I can watch the entire ton go into a frenzy. And so I can get a good look at the man himself. But, Mr. Medlock, are you quite certain this is a good idea?” Concern flickered across her face. “I’d hate to see Lord Courtenay embroil you in any kind of scandal.”

  At the thought of the sort of scandals that Courtenay usually found himself embroiled in, a wave of heat washed over Julian’s body. Embarrassment but also something much more dangerous. “I’m quite certain it’s a terrible idea,” he admitted. But he wasn’t only talking about his good name being sullied. He also thought of the way Courtenay’s voice was an insinuating purr, the way he had leaned toward Julian in Eleanor’s parlor.

  A terrible idea, indeed.

  “What’s this about, Eleanor?”

  Courtenay had found her walking in the garden, where the first green shoots were emerging in a flower bed.

  “The crocuses are late,” she answered. “They ought already to be in bloom.”

  It had done nothing but snow, rain, and otherwise precipitate since he arrived in England a few months earlier. If the crocuses never bloomed he’d hardly be surprised. He would be glad to return to warmer climes, which he supposed he’d do if Radnor continued to succeed in keeping Simon from him. “True. But I was speaking of your brother. He’d rather eat glass than be seen with me, and yet he’s going with me to the opera, in plain view of God and everyone. Did you blackmail him?”

  He had meant this last remark as a joke, something to smooth the furrow from her brow. But she stiffened, wrapping her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. “It was not blackmail, whatever he might have said.”

  Courtenay took this to mean that she had most certainly blackmailed her brother. She was slightly ruthless—that was part of what he liked about her, after all—so he wasn’t surprised to discover a Machiavellian streak. The only thing that surprised him was that Medlock had any secrets worth keeping. Perhaps he had worn the wrong waistcoat or forgotten Sir Somebody’s name or committed some equally boring infraction.

  “Whatever it was, thank you,” he said. He wasn’t accustomed to receiving favors, especially from people who had outright refused to share his bed, as Eleanor had done. “I don’t like my odds of success, but thank you.”

  She looked up at him sharply now. “Radnor isn’t a monster, you know. He may yet come around.”

  He shook his head. “But—”

  “Give it a few weeks,” Eleanor said. “Things could work out for you. They don’t always, not for everyone.” There was a sorrowful note in her voice that made him want to take her by the hand, but she smiled with false brightness, forestalling any sympathy. “But they could for you.”

  Courtenay wasn’t interested in discussing the shipwreck that was his future. “That bonnet is fetching. Blue becomes you. Is it new?”

  “Flatterer.” She looked away, turning her attention to the weak shoots of green in the loamy flower bed. “That’s another reason you ought to let Julian try to help you. It’ll give him something to do other than buy me things. If he sends me so much as another parasol, I swear I’ll set it on fire. He’s bought me four dinner gowns in the last month. Four!”

  Courtenay was surprised to learn that Medlock, who seemed a tight-fisted sort, bought his sister’s clothing. Eleanor was always dressed expensively, even lavishly. He had thought it a sweet, vain streak in his new friend, the care she took in selecting her attire while never seeming to notice what she was wearing.

  Eleanor had been one of the first people he had met after arriving in England. She had been staying with Radnor at his godforsaken shambles of a house in Cornwall, doing something involving electricity.

  He had promptly tried to seduce her. Unsuccessfully.

  She had been amused by his attempt, as if it had never occurred to her that anyone would want to get her into his bed. Courtenay felt nothing but contempt for her absent husband, the fool. To abscond to the Orient, or the Antipodes, or wherever the fellow was when one had a wife like Eleanor seemed the height of idiocy.

  They had fallen into an easy friendship, the sort of camaraderie that usually took years to establish. He had more or less followed her to London like a duckling after its mother. He hadn’t anywhere else to be, s
o he hired a set of rooms that wouldn’t put him too badly out of pocket. He frequented the sort of coffeehouses where artists and other clever people congregated, but he found himself most often at Eleanor’s house. Even after he spelled out to her the damage his friendship would cause her reputation, she had waved away his concern. “What, will I ruin my prospects?” And then she had laughed bitterly.

  Over the past few months, Courtenay had come to understand that Eleanor—despite being sufficiently rich and utterly brilliant—was sad. Whatever was causing her sorrow, she wouldn’t talk about it, but Courtenay had formed his own opinions. Courtenay understood very well what it was like to have old troubles that lodged like a splinter in one’s brain.

  “Give your frocks away,” he said blithely. “Found a charity to clothe fallen women.” He fell into the habit of talking nonsense to take her mind off her troubles. It was what he did.

  “Ha! I doubt fallen women would have any interest in the sort of gown Julian fancies. Everything is correct, from the number of ruffles to the exact cut of the neckline. It would be an insult to fallen women to subject them to such boring frocks.”

  “They’re very becoming,” he said, “in a sedate sort of way.” And it was true, but now that he knew the gowns weren’t Eleanor’s own choice, he could see the hand of the man who had chosen them. It was as if Medlock had an equation to solve, and the answer was a cornflower blue promenade gown with three flounces and a matching pelisse. Everything studiedly correct, painstakingly proper.

  Then he remembered the fullness of the man’s lips, and the way he his eyes had flared at Courtenay’s coarseness. Perhaps not so proper after all.

  “Come here.” He unknotted the ribbons of her bonnet and retied them in a bow under one ear. Much more fashionable that way. “There we go.” He took her by the shoulders, holding her at arm’s length to admire his handiwork. She scowled at him but didn’t retie the bow. Dropping his hands to his sides, he said, “I spoke with the cook. She won’t give notice.” He had begun by complimenting the cook’s pastry, comparing it favorably with the efforts of the chefs he had employed in Italy and France. “It seems that she had a row with your butler and each of them said a good many regrettable things.”

  She shook her head. “I wasn’t worried about that.”

  “I know, my dear, but I was.” He was fond of her, and she seemed on the precipice of something . . . irrevocable. He didn’t know precisely what, but he knew what someone looked like before they made a bad decision. He knew it very well indeed. “I’m not doing you any favors by spending so much time here.”

  Eleanor crouched to poke at one of the emerging bits of green, the edge of her shawl dragging in the dirt. “We’ve been through this,” she said, steel in her voice. And so they had. Courtenay had no intention of reembarking on a subject that was tiresome to them both. The world was filled with enough tiresomeness without deliberately adding to it.

  Courtenay only wished she sounded happier in saying so. It would all be well and good if Eleanor actually enjoyed consorting with disreputable artists and rogues such as had congregated here last night. But she had regarded the party like a spectator at a play: she wasn’t enjoying herself so much as staving off boredom. Or worse.

  He bent forward and kissed her cheek. “Let’s go inside and have some tea.”

  They went in arm in arm, Eleanor lost in her silent troubles and Courtenay considering how long he could in good conscience let Eleanor associate with him.

  Perhaps it was just as well Radnor wouldn’t let Simon anywhere near him. Courtenay knew by now the havoc he wreaked on everyone close to him. There was a grave in an Italian churchyard testifying to that. Yes, Isabella had made her own choices, but Courtenay was her elder brother and ought to have known better. He had spent a decade doing whatever pleased him—going where he wanted, spending what he wished, bedding who he desired. Now his fortune was gone, his sister dead, his nephew lost, and Courtenay had come to think of himself as an agent of destruction. Even when he meant well, ruin followed in his wake like vultures after a hunt.

  Chapter Four

  Julian was starting to fear that bringing Courtenay to the opera had been a tactical error. For one, Courtenay seemed to take up twice the space of any normal man. It wasn’t his size—indeed, Julian found himself repeatedly confirming that Courtenay was not much larger than he was himself—a bit broader in the shoulders and perhaps an inch or two taller, but he was hardly a giant. No, Courtenay simply arranged his body with no regard for anyone who was forced to share space with him. Instead of sitting on the chair like a normal person, he positively sprawled, propping one of his long legs on the empty seat before him and stretching an arm along the back of the empty seat to his side.

  They had the entire box to themselves, but Julian was acutely aware of all the places where their bodies almost—but not quite—touched. Every breath brought him into acute danger of one of his limbs meeting one of Courtenay’s. And that was a fate he ardently hoped would not come to pass, for reasons he chose not to dwell on.

  It was all he could do to keep his attention on the opera. Actually, that wasn’t true, because he had no idea what had happened thus far beyond the usual foreign singing, and it was nearly the interval.

  And then there was the matter of Courtenay’s reading material. To have brought any book whatsoever to the opera was eccentric at best. But Courtenay, somehow managing to lounge decadently in the stiff-backed chair as if he were reading in bed, for God’s sake, had brought the blasted Brigand Prince. Why bring any book at all, unless it was to demonstrate how bored he was with his company? As if his posture alone didn’t communicate that fact quite sufficiently.

  Occasionally, for whatever purpose, Courtenay would read a passage aloud.

  “Listen to this, Medlock.” Courtenay lowered his voice so as not to be heard by anyone in a neighboring box. This was, ostensibly, polite, but the raspy quiet of his voice, combined with the darkness, suggested an intimacy Julian did not want to think of. “Don Lorenzo has caught Agatha traipsing through the haunted abbey. Do you think they’ll finally take one another’s clothes off?”

  Julian nearly protested that it wasn’t an abbey (it was a monastery), it wasn’t haunted (the eerie noises came from imprisoned monks, not specters), and this was hardly the sort of book in which the characters took off one another’s clothing (more’s the pity). But he reflected that a highly specific knowledge of the contents of The Brigand Prince was not something Julian Medlock ought to know in his capacity as a gentleman.

  Instead, without looking at Courtenay, he murmured, “Is that so?” in the same polite tone one would use with someone who was tiresomely complaining about a toothache. They did not need to be friends. They did not even need to be friendly. All Julian needed to do was indicate to the world that Lord Courtenay was a person a respectable gentleman could be seen with.

  And seen they were. For the entire performance, Julian had been acutely aware of glances darted their way, opera glasses aimed towards them. “You might try sitting up straight,” he hissed. “Please recall that we’re here to create the illusion that you’re not an unfit companion for an impressionable child.”

  Instead Courtenay slid his chair into the shadowy recesses of the box, and then proceeded to cross his ankles on the seat before him, adopting a posture that signified contempt for the entire enterprise: the opera, society in general, and Julian in particular. The least he could do was pretend to be grateful for Julian’s efforts. Julian didn’t know what his sister saw in the man. But it didn’t matter. He was discharging his obligation to Eleanor, and then it would be over.

  “Agatha’s frightened,” Courtenay said. He still hadn’t looked up from the book, which Julian might have found flattering under other circumstances. “But not nearly as frightened as she ought to be, if you ask my opinion. Lorenzo—that’s me, you know—grabs her by the wrists—”

  Julian could not let that go by. “My understanding is that people popular
ly assume Lorenzo to be modeled—physically, at least—after you, but unless you’ve spent time manhandling maidens in monasteries, you can’t properly say that Lorenzo is you.”

  “Who’s to say that I haven’t? I can’t recall doing anything untoward in a—you’re quite right, it’s a monastery, not an abbey. How clever of you to remember.” Julian cringed at his slipup. “But I can’t pretend to remember every last one of my sins. Since you’ve read the novel, let me ask you who you think Agatha is? Norton is certain that she’s supposed to be Mrs. Castleton’s oldest daughter, but I’ve never laid eyes on the girl, much less seduced her, so it seems an odd thing to have us pawing at one another in Italy.”

  “Agatha certainly doesn’t paw anybody,” Julian said. Courtenay—he meant Lorenzo, dash it—was the only one who could properly be said to paw.

  “Oh, yes she does,” Courtenay said, flipping through the pages. “Agatha gripped Don Lorenzo’s cloak. ‘Give me my locket,’ she cried, twisting the heavy velvet in her small, white hands, until Don Lorenzo had no choice but to bend towards her, or otherwise risk tearing the valuable fabric.”

  That was a grossly out of context passage. “That’s hardly pawing,” Julian hissed, indignant on poor Agatha’s behalf. “She needs the locket to prove that she’s the prince’s rightful heir. And he’s trying to abscond with it, so of course she wants to stop him.” Before he could think better of it, he had shifted over and taken a new seat beside Courtenay. “Give me that.” He took the book from Courtenay’s hands and closed it firmly.

  “But she goes on holding his cloak for three pages. Lorenzo doesn’t make the slightest move to get away,” Courtenay murmured. “He just lets himself get pulled to and fro by a slip of a girl.” He was silent for a moment, and Julian dared to hope that this topic was closed. “That’s what I don’t understand. How did the author know?”