The Ruin of a Rake

by Cat Sebastian

  “It’s very late,” Courtenay began.

  “I ought to be going,” Medlock interrupted, rising to his feet and fumbling with his trousers.

  “Nonsense. It’s past four in the morning, and as you pointed out, this is just the sort of neighborhood where bands of footpads roam unchecked.”

  “It isn’t really. I only said that to be difficult.” He cast a glance around the room, as if he were searching for something, but he was fully dressed. They hadn’t even taken their coats or boots off, which seemed at odds with how utterly naked Courtenay felt. “You do need to find better lodgings, though.”

  A few hours ago, Medlock had offered to deal with that himself, but now he looked like he wished he had never come here in the first place, let alone offered to involve himself further in Courtenay’s affairs. “Spend what remains of the night here,” Courtenay said. He had confessed how little he liked being alone, and Medlock had admitted to the same. That’s all it was, a convenient arrangement for both of them, and any silly notion Courtenay had about wishing it were otherwise was just his cock talking, surely.

  Medlock shifted from foot to foot and ran his hands through his hair, which the moonlight had bleached to gray. Courtenay stood and took off his coat and waistcoat. When, after another minute, Medlock still had made no move toward the door, Courtenay took his hand and tried to lead the way towards the bedroom.

  “No,” Medlock said, pulling his hand swiftly away. “In the morning I’ll send a servant to collect your records and I’ll get everything in order. Or—no—I’ll have my man of business attend to it.” The longer he spoke, the closer his voice got to his usual peevishness, further and further away from the man who had given in to lust and tenderness. “That coat,” he said, gesturing to the garment Courtenay still held. “It’s Weston, isn’t it?” He was referring to the tailor half the gentlemen of the ton patronized.

  “Of course,” Courtenay said. “I had to replace most of my wardrobe after coming to England.” All his clothing had seemed foreign and strange, the attire of a different man.

  “You can’t afford any of it,” Medlock said, now fully returned to his irritable self. “Your boots too. Everything of the latest fashion and highest quality.”

  It was a reproach. Courtenay had received worse, and surely should not have felt ashamed. “I’m very vain. And profligate. You knew that already.”

  Medlock sighed. “Good night, Courtenay.” He grabbed his hat off the hook by the door and was gone before Courtenay could fully appreciate how disappointed he was.

  Chapter Ten

  When Julian got back to his lodgings—proper lodgings, not a hole in the wall on the outer fringes of civilization, he was pleased to remind himself—he didn’t even bother trying to sleep. He had no interest in being alone in his bed with nothing but fevered memories of the previous few hours. The sun was nearly up, or at least it would be soon enough, and, for the first time in months, he had work to do.

  Eleanor had mentioned that Radnor was having a hard time finding a house to let somewhere in the vicinity of Harrow, so as to be near Simon when he started school. Courtenay’s house would do quite well. It didn’t matter that it was currently inhabited; indeed, he took a vicious satisfaction in writing to Mrs. Blakely, informing her of Lord Courtenay’s intentions to let Carrington Hall.

  Next he wrote to Radnor’s secretary. This was a Mr. Turner—or so he claimed—who had at some point been a sort of confidence artist. Julian had debated telling Radnor that his secretary was probably up to no good, but decided that polite, proper Mr. Medlock wouldn’t discuss such a thing. So instead he wrote Turner a very cordial letter informing him of a house that might meet his employer’s requirements.

  This plan had the added benefit of putting Radnor in Courtenay’s debt. Julian would see to it that Courtenay’s house was offered to Radnor at well below the cost of similar houses in the neighborhood. Even better, he’d persuade Courtenay to allow Radnor to explode the conservatory or build canals in the rose garden or whatever other lunacy his scientific pursuits might require. They’d never find another owner willing to allow that.

  He was perhaps overstepping by offering the property to Radnor without mentioning this fact to Courtenay, but if anything was clear, it was that Courtenay couldn’t manage his own affairs. He paid his debts on time, which was so unusual a practice among gentlemen as to be nearly eccentric, and gave money to whoever asked him. Really, he wasn’t fit to go outside on his own, let alone manage a complicated estate.

  With the income from the rent of the Stanmore property, Courtenay would be able to properly staff and live in his London townhouse. And if Courtenay’s own funds fell slightly short, Julian would quietly deposit some of his own money into Courtenay’s account to make up the difference, and nobody needed to be the wiser. At the prospect of creating a budget and finessing the numbers until they were behaving themselves, he nearly rubbed his hands together in glee. Lord, he had been bored. His brain had been turning to rot these past months. This was the problem with living in the space between illnesses, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. He couldn’t do anything more meaningful than arrange for Eleanor’s furniture to be reupholstered.

  And, well, he had done a bit more than that last fall while recovering from his last illness, although he tried not to think about it, as one always tried to avoid dwelling on one’s lapses into vulgarity.

  But the sad fact of the matter was that he had written a novel, for God’s sake. A half-demented sensational novel. Julian had regretted it almost as soon as he had delivered The Brigand Prince to the printers. No doubt it had been slightly shabby of him to have used Courtenay as a model for his villain, but he had written the manuscript before even meeting Courtenay. Only later had he gone back to map Courtenay’s looks and mannerisms onto the villain. At first he had though it rather Courtenay’s own fault for behaving precisely as one expected an evil mastermind to do. All that lurking and brooding and sultry staring.

  The truth was more complicated, though. Julian had poured everything into that book that he couldn’t have in the real limits of his life. At a time when he was confined to his bed, he had written pages and pages of adventure. He, a man who hid his desires and obfuscated his background, created a hero and heroine who had no need for artifice or dissembling, so pure of heart and motive were they. He had given his sweet, dull-witted Agatha a clear purpose in life and an ally with whom to achieve it. At the end, they lived happily ever after.

  He had filled the pages of that book with everything he could never have, would never let himself admit he wanted. Courtenay—beautiful, dangerous, and indifferent to censure—had to go into the book as a matter of course.

  Well, nobody would ever know he had written The Brigand Prince, least of all Courtenay. Perhaps if he used the proceeds from the book to right Courtenay’s ship, that would be restitution enough. He could use the money to hire some staff for the Albemarle-Street townhouse. That way at least Julian wasn’t actually profiting off Courtenay’s shaming.

  The trouble was that now he had allowed himself a taste of one impossible thing, he worried that he might keep wanting more. He’d want honesty. He’d want to be known for who he really was. He’d want to let people see past the carefully polished exterior to the man within.

  It would be dreadful.

  He was going to think only about Courtenay’s money, or lack thereof, and not about the man himself. He would keep his mind busy, filled with things that were not memories of Courtenay’s hands and mouth and the words he had spoken. He would not itemize and catalogue the ways in which their encounter had differed from the sort of discreet and cordial interlude he used to prefer—no, which he still preferred, because last night had changed absolutely nothing. If he went long enough without thinking about it, the memories would fade, or at least be covered up by more layers of protective varnish, and it would be like it never happened in the first place. He’d go back to his calm, friendly encounters and he woul
dn’t feel that his life was any poorer for it.

  The morning post brought a stack of bills and a single letter. Courtenay didn’t even bother opening the bills. He simply tossed them into the trunk with the rest of the lot for Medlock to deal with and tore open the letter. A quick glance at the signature told him it was from Radnor’s secretary. Radnor hadn’t even bothered to pick up the pen himself, which meant the letter could contain no good news. Indeed, it was terse and uncompromising, worded to cut him to the quick. Courtenay was kindly requested to direct all future correspondence through his lordship’s solicitors, Messrs. Winston and Haughton, Lincoln’s Inn. It was as efficient a dismissal as Medlock’s had been in the early hours of the morning.

  He balled up the letter and threw it in the trunk with everything else he didn’t want to think about. The trunk was getting damned full.

  He grabbed his hat and walked to Eleanor’s house. She was home, thank God, because he didn’t feel equal to spending the day on his own. The house was quiet, empty, the sound of his footsteps echoing off the cool marble of the vestibule. It was a grand house, richly furnished with the best of everything. A good many people would envy Eleanor, and for good reason. But, walking through the barren corridors, he thought he had been happier in that Florentine debtors’ prison than Eleanor was in her fine house.

  He found her in her back parlor, and it struck him that he hadn’t seen her outside this room in more than a week. She wasn’t going to lectures or salons, she wasn’t attending the theater or any of the events that were beginning to be held even this early in the season. Watching her bent over the letter she was writing, he had the sense that her melancholy was spreading through her like a cancer.

  He shut the door and, when Eleanor didn’t look up from her work, he opened it and shut it again, this time loudly.

  “Oh, good day, Courtenay. Did you come for luncheon?”

  “Shouldn’t you be going out to luncheons with your lady friends?”

  “I could ask you much the same thing.”

  “I ought to go to luncheons? Not likely.”

  “You ought to be with lady friends. Or, any friends at all, really. As for me, you call on me every day. So does Julian. That’s enough.”

  She made enough sound like a terrible fate. “Oh, Eleanor,” he said. “I really am worried about you.”

  “I have my health and a good deal of money,” she said crisply, “and with any luck I’ll have a patent on a telegraphical device before midsummer, so there’s nothing to worry about.” Her voice faltered on the last few words. And then she burst into tears. He took her hand and drew her up into an embrace.

  “I’m trying to figure out a way through the next few decades of my life,” she said, wiping her eyes on his waistcoat, “but I haven’t done it yet.”

  “You will,” he said into her hair.

  “I know, but it’s nothing like how I thought it would be, and it’s taking my mind some time to recalibrate, I think.”

  Courtenay had never had any vision of his future. He had always played the hand he was dealt without too much concern over the next round. But he understood what it meant to look around at your lot in life and be sorely disappointed.

  “Got a letter from Radnor’s secretary,” he said, thinking some outrage might distract her. “Basically told me to sod off in the most polite language.”

  She made a noise of frustration. “I don’t know what to do with Radnor. I’ve made your case—Simon’s case—but he isn’t moved.”

  “I’m going to need to let it go. Radnor’s very fond of Simon and they don’t need me.”

  She pulled back long enough to look at his face. “Oh, Courtenay. Poor dear. You’re another one with a couple of decades to fill and no idea how to do it.”

  Wrong. He knew what to do. He’d go back to Italy. No, Greece, because it was further. He’d fuck his way straight across the Continent, as Medlock had so charmingly put it, and then he’d keep going. That would keep him comfortably distracted until he died of the pox or succumbed to a fever.

  When he heard the click of the door opening, he stepped away from Eleanor and dropped his hands to his sides. Looking over Eleanor’s shoulder, he saw a man who was strangely familiar, but he couldn’t place him. “Eleanor,” he said quietly. “You have a visitor.”

  Eleanor turned and went so pale Courtenay thought she might faint. “Ned,” she whispered. But then she tilted her chin up in her most regal manner and said, “Sir Edward, what a lovely surprise.”

  Courtenay’s first thought was that he hadn’t known that Eleanor’s husband was Indian. Or, rather, by the looks of him, he had at least one Indian grandparent. He was dark, quite handsome, and only a few years older than Eleanor. Courtenay had always imagined an aged, bookish Englishman of the type who went off to travel the world and then simply never came back.

  With a start, he realized how he knew Sir Edward Standish. Their paths had crossed more than once—several years ago in Constantinople, and later in Cairo when Isabella had taken a fancy to showing Simon the pyramids. Standish had been working as a translator and hadn’t been using his title. He had never made the connection to Eleanor until now.

  Courtenay saw the answering gleam of recognition on Standish’s face, and also remembered that Courtenay had been carrying on an indiscreet affair with a married woman during that time in Constantinople. Standish was clearly not best pleased to find his wife in the arms of a man such as Courtenay. Really, if he cared so much about who she kept company with, he shouldn’t have abandoned her in the first place. Yet, his jaw was clenched, his hands balled in fists at his sides.

  “My lady,” Standish ground out. “Do me the favor of an introduction, if you please.” Courtenay wanted to clock him on the head if that was how he greeted his wife after six years’ absence.

  “Lord Courtenay, this is my husband, Sir Edward Standish.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Standish said, eying him up and down.

  “A pleasure,” Courtenay drawled. If he was going to be cast in the role of wife-stealing rake, he’d play it.

  Standish folded his arms across his chest and stood silently. Plainly he wanted Courtenay to leave, but there wasn’t a chance Courtenay was leaving Eleanor alone with a man who had a look of such fury on his face, not unless Eleanor explicitly told him to.

  He sat on the sofa—right in the middle, so one of the Standishes would have to sit beside him if they sat at all—and smiled broadly. “I hope you had a pleasant journey,” he said. “A couple years long, was it?”

  There were advantages to being considered beneath reproach: if everybody already thought one rude and scandalous, it was almost satisfying to live up to their expectations. And Standish deserved a lot worse than a bit of drawing-room rudeness.

  Eleanor rang the bell to summon a servant, then hesitated between sitting at her desk chair or sitting on the sofa beside Courtenay. She ended by pulling out the desk chair and pushing it to Standish, then perching on the edge of the desk. That at first seemed like a diplomatic solution, but when the tea arrived, she couldn’t very well stay there, so she had to sit beside Courtenay.

  “How long are you in London, Sir Edward?” she asked as she poured tea.

  “That depends,” he said curtly and without elaboration.

  Courtenay supposed he needed money and had come to get some from his wife. He liked the fellow less by the minute. Or perhaps he came to demand an heir. Even worse.

  “You’ll find London much changed,” Courtenay ventured, because it was the pleasantry he had heard the most since his return to England. It never failed to annoy him, and he was glad to pass the bad feelings on to Standish.

  “I haven’t set foot in England since I was a child,” he said, looking at Eleanor. “I never planned to return.” He stared at his tea, as if his cup contained something unfathomably wrong, like paraffin or hair tonic instead of perfectly normal tea. “We were married in India,” he added abstractedly. His gaze seemed to fix on E
leanor’s paperweight.

  “You can leave, Courtenay,” Eleanor murmured. “It’s all right.”

  “Are you certain?” he whispered, aware that Standish had turned to watch them with a hawk’s piercing gaze.

  “He won’t hurt me, if that’s what you’re asking. As for everything else, it could hardly get worse.”

  He kissed her hand and took his leave, sparing Standish only the most insouciant of bows on his way out the door.

  As soon as he got to the street his smile dropped. Medlock needed to be informed right away of his brother-in-law’s return, so he could be present to help his sister should the need arise.

  After they had parted on such awkward terms, he had rather hoped to avoid Medlock, but now he had no choice.

  “It doesn’t make any sense.” Julian collapsed, peeved and out of breath, onto a bench at the fencing studio. “You have one good leg. I ought to have beaten you handily.”

  Rivington—Lady Montbray’s brother—sank onto the bench beside him. “I have a longer reach and better training,” he said simply.

  Julian grumbled and pushed a sweaty lock of hair off his forehead. He didn’t begrudge Rivington the win, but he was deeply annoyed that his strategy of fencing until his head was on straight hadn’t worked. It always had in the past. He had believed that his ability to overcome any stray licentious impulse was owing to his rigorous training and perhaps an innate strength of character. But that was before he met Courtenay.

  In Courtenay’s arms, Julian had let something off the leash he hadn’t realized was restrained in the first place. He had gotten something he hadn’t known he wanted.

  He realized Rivington had been talking. “I’m sorry, what was that, Rivington?”

  Rivington raised his eyebrows. “I was only saying that my other advantage was that your mind is elsewhere.”