The Earl Who Played With Fire

by Sara Ramsey

  “Go find another, then,” Alex said shortly. “I’ve no time for whist.”

  He made a show of returning to his desk and shuffling his papers. Malcolm laughed. “Abandon your Puritanism, Salford. We’re not the dissolute rakehells you’d make us out to be.”

  “Salford wasn’t a Puritan when he was younger,” Ferguson observed. “But then, I was a rakehell. Not every man can change for the better as he ages, as I have.”

  Alex’s patience ran thin. “If I take my responsibilities rather more seriously than you do, that’s not a moral failing.”

  He knew he sounded like a prig even as he said it. Ferguson didn’t stop, though. “If I’m not responsible enough for your tastes, I’m still better company than you’re likely to get tonight. Come to White’s with us. I know you usually only turn up there to castigate me for my failings. I’ll save you the trouble of finding me and take you along.”

  Alex had only “castigated” Ferguson at White’s once, during Madeleine and Ferguson’s secret courtship. But the words weren’t what got Alex’s hackles up.

  It was the tone in Ferguson’s voice, and the way he looked at Alex with something verging on pity.

  Nick raised his glass in sympathy. “Ferguson and Carnach already collected me tonight, with similar insults about my inability to hold my own with them. Don’t leave me to the wolves.”

  “I thought marriage would have sobered all of you,” Alex said.

  Ferguson shrugged. “That’s why we need you. We shall live vicariously through your rakehell ways, if you can find them under all your layers of propriety.”

  Alex laughed despite himself. “I’ve none left.”

  “Then you should find them.” Ferguson seemed utterly serious, suddenly, as though this was the real intention for his visit. “You’re not a young man, Salford. If you save it for too late to run amok, you’ll just embarrass yourself.”

  Malcolm nodded sagely — or drunkenly, it wasn’t clear. “Nothing worse than an elderly rake.”

  Alex wasn’t elderly. He was only thirty-three. But he felt old, sometimes. Odd feeling, of course; his life was exactly what he had asked for at twenty-two, while Ferguson, Malcolm, and Nick were far more settled than he was. But being trapped in his youthful dream was more aging, somehow, than if he had been allowed to change.

  Or perhaps he was aging because of the strain of keeping Prudence at arm’s length. All this time, he had been aware of the danger she faced from him. He had tried to save her from his curse by staying aloof. The only way to keep the curse from striking her was to keep his own heart disengaged.

  But he hadn’t anticipated that she would put him in mortal danger as well. Because every time he’d seen her after that horrid night six weeks earlier was another little slice at his skin. No single glance was enough to kill him — but a thousand such glances might do it.

  He had done the right thing by pushing her away. He had to believe that. If he didn’t believe it…well, in that case, he couldn’t live with himself any more than he could live with her.

  He’d lapsed into brooding, as usual. And as usual, Ferguson couldn’t take a hint and leave him be. “Salford, you’re turning into a corpse. It’s my sworn duty as your cousin to take you to a club and get you foxed.”

  “Cousin-in-law,” Alex corrected. “Take Nick out and get him foxed instead. He’s your brother-in-law — surely you owe him more attention than you do me.”

  “We shall get him foxed as well. But you are our primary target. And if you won’t come with us, we’re not above kidnapping you.”

  Alex rolled his eyes. “Is there anything I can do to convince you to leave?”

  “No,” Ferguson and Malcolm both said simultaneously.

  “Then let’s do this quickly, shall we?” Alex said, pushing himself away from his desk. “I wager I can drink you under the table and be home before midnight.”

  * * *

  They had been fools to take that wager. But then, how could they know that the curse prevented Alex from becoming inebriated? The worst suffering he felt during a night of drinking was the unpleasant taste of whatever he chose to drink. But his drinking companions would all have headaches in the morning — if they were even able to wake up before noon.

  “To the ladies, God save us,” Malcolm said, slurring his words.

  Nick raised his glass. “I can drink to that.”

  He couldn’t quite drink to that. Alex saw him fumble as he set his glass on the table. Another round of claret and the rest of them would be out for the night.

  Alex reached for the bottle and offered to pour. Ferguson looked at his steady hands suspiciously. “You’re more sober than I. Impossible.”

  Alex shrugged. “My Puritanism has given me an excellent constitution.”

  “You should try Puritanism, Ferguson,” Nick said, after watching Alex’s pouring ability with the childlike curiosity of a drunkard. “Less mess for the servants.”

  Ferguson frowned at the red stain that had spread around his glass from his own attempts to refill it. “Less mess. But where’s the fun in that?”

  Alex laughed along with the rest of them. He had pretended to enjoy himself at first, mostly to keep the attention away from himself and on whatever bits of Parliamentary gossip they were sharing with each other. But perhaps by the very act of pretending, he actually had enjoyed himself.

  Of course, his enjoyment would end soon. The drunker they became, the less he understood why they found everything so amusing. But if his life had been different — if he hadn’t ruined it for himself by wishing for his studies when he was too young to know better — he could have enjoyed many nights like this.

  Still, coming out in public meant seeing people he would rather not see. And one of those people came up to their table just as Alex finished pouring the next round.

  “Salford,” the Duke of Thorington said, sketching a small bow. “Haven’t seen you here in an age.”

  “Thorington,” he said, returning the bow with an incline of his head. “You’re looking well.”

  Thorington was the only man in London who knew of Alex’s affliction — because he, too, was cursed. They had been Alex and Gavin to each other in Cambridge, and had still been the best of friends when they’d made their wishes together. But new titles and old bitterness had changed all that.

  Malcolm, though, was too drunk to notice the ice freezing between the two men. “Your grace,” he exclaimed, in a too-loud voice that somehow melted into the din of the club. “Thought you’d be playing somewhere deeper than this. Join us, will you? We need a troop of reinforcements in our campaign to get Salford foxed, but you’ll do for a start.”

  “You may need a battalion,” Thorington said, taking the chair Malcolm had offered. “But I’ll strive to best him.”

  There was more to his words than that. Did the others notice the glance Thorington gave Alex — the speculation in his green eyes, or the hint of challenge in his chin?

  They couldn’t have noticed. Malcolm was too busy trying to signal a footman for another glass. Ferguson was still watching Alex’s hands, looking for a tremor he wouldn’t find. And Nick was attempting to stack playing cards together into a house — a fool’s effort, since either his fingers or the jostling of the table would fail him every time he tried a second level.

  That left Thorington and Alex to circle around each other warily, a battle waged in plain sight. “How goes your collecting?” Alex asked, after Thorington was settled into the chair a footman had brought him.

  “Prodigiously. But there are always new items to be acquired.”

  “And have you found anything worth acquiring?”

  The duke shrugged. To the casual observer, he seemed noncommittal. But Alex knew Thorington far too well to be fooled. He was impeccably dressed, his dark hair perfectly cut, but he was no gentleman. There was menace there, something ugly and taunting. “We don’t share, do we? A shame. If we worked together, we would get farther.”

 
That would be true if they wanted the same thing. But where Alex wanted a way to destroy the curse, Thorington wanted to ensure that the power behind the curse was never broken.

  Alex saw the scar on Thorington’s palm as he took a glass from a footman. Their scars matched, the only physical reminder of that night so long ago when they had both used the dagger to make their wishes come true. The note that had come with the dagger was the only tangible clue they’d ever had. And it was just too vague to know whether breaking the curse would only affect the one who broke it, or anyone who had ever made a wish.

  Thorington had wished for wealth. It was a necessity for him, as the first responsible member of his family in decades. His ancestors had created a dynasty made up entirely of profligate spenders, cast-off mistresses, and bastard progeny who demanded outrageous upkeep. Alex, whose life had been perfect by contrast, had instead wished for something more scholarly.

  They were silly wishes, but then, they had been drunk and cocksure, men of science having a lark with a bit of superstitious nonsense. And Alex’s father had been pressing him to leave Cambridge and take on more responsibilities with the estate — perhaps it was natural for a son to wish that his father would get off his back.

  Nothing had happened immediately. It was only the next day that everything changed for both of them. Alex’s father had died in the night; he would never interfere again, to Alex’s eternal regret. And then Thorington had gotten foxed and found himself trapped into marriage with a rich, unprincipled social climber.

  Alex had gone to Gavin a week after his father’s funeral. The door of the grand house on Grosvenor Square sported a muffled knocker and a vast mourning wreath, but Alex didn’t turn away. The footman, wearing black instead of livery, frowned, but escorted him into a drawing room. Gavin had entered minutes later. Already his eyes were harder, but Alex hadn’t known then how far his friend could fall.

  “Condolences on your loss, Salford,” Gavin said, shaking Alex’s hand.

  Using Alex’s title — the title that had been his father’s until a week earlier — was the first shot in what would become their private war. “We must find a way to reverse this, Huxley,” Alex said.

  Gavin, as next in line to the Duke of Thorington, was Earl of Huxley by courtesy. If he wouldn’t call Alex by his Christian name, Alex would give him the same formality. But Gavin shook his head. “Did you not hear? I am Thorington now.”

  To any other man, Alex would have offered condolences. To Gavin, he merely said, “The curse?”

  “It got something right after all,” Gavin said. “I’m to marry a harpy, and I win so much at cards that I’ll likely duel half of London for accusing me of cheating, but at least the old man can no longer bleed me dry.”

  Alex’s head reeled. “What does your family think?”

  Thorington shrugged. Later, his shrug would be perfected into a gesture of cool dismissal, but that day he’d still had a heart. “They’ll muddle through or come to me when they need something. Same as always.”

  Alex rose to pace, no longer able to stay still. The room was cold, underheated for the blustery March day. He’d thought the footman rude for not taking his greatcoat, but he was glad to have it. He dug his hands into his pockets and took a breath. “This cannot be real,” he said. “It must be a coincidence.”

  It was a litany he’d repeated to himself since the morning he’d awoken to the sound of his mother’s screams. But Thorington denied his sad attempt at comfort. “It’s real. You know it is.”

  “Then we must stop it,” Alex said. “The note said our wishes will come true until the power is broken. Who else will die for us?”

  Thorington was silent for a long time. Alex could only see his father’s coffin in his mind, and the grave Alex’s wish had driven him to. But the new duke saw a different fate.

  “What’s done is done,” he said. “All we can do is live with the consequences.”

  Alex stopped pacing and stared at him. “There must be a way to break the curse. We can find it together.”

  The dagger had come to them, along with several other artifacts, in a lot sold by a trader who had smuggled them out of Egypt after the British had defeated the French. If the note mentioned breaking the power, then logically there must be a way to break it. But the cure wasn’t included in the note.

  “That presumes I wish to break it,” Thorington said.

  “Why wouldn’t you?”

  The duke gestured around the room. “I can barely afford to heat this house, let alone maintain it. My family runs through everything faster than I can produce it. And I would like to bring my mother back to England in style, even if she may not live long enough to enjoy it.”

  Alex had forgotten about Thorington’s mother. The duchess had gone to Europe in some sort of secret disgrace years before. But his own mother’s grief was too fresh to spare much concern for a woman he hadn’t seen in years. “The cost is too great. We can find…”

  Thorington cut him off. “We won’t. Search if you like. Or wish for something better than what you wished for. But I won’t allow you to break the curse if I have any ability to prevent it.”

  Those words had severed their friendship, completely and irrevocably. Alex had left, furious, and determined to find the cure. Over the years, Alex’s determination had only grown — especially when he realized he could never marry for fear of the curse killing any woman he grew too fond of.

  But Thorington’s determination had grown too, augmented by his dark, ruthless reputation. They’d been polite in public, but in private they tried to outbid each other for anything and everything that might help their opposing causes. And they weren’t above spying on each other to look for clues that the other might have found a crucial object.

  But this was White’s, not an antiquities shop. Alex could feign nonchalance. He lifted his glass. “To the hunt.”

  “The hunt,” Thorington repeated, sipping his wine.

  “What are you hunting?” Malcolm asked.

  “Never say you’re thinking of settling down,” Ferguson said.

  Alex shook his head. “Of course not.”

  “On that, we are agreed,” Thorington said. There was an old flash of humor in his eyes, just enough that Alex felt a twinge of regret over the divergent paths their lives had taken.

  But the humor was odd, since Thorington’s wife had died less than six months earlier. “I take it you are not looking for a new duchess?” Alex asked.

  “No, although lately I’ve thought it might be better to find one than have one foisted on me,” Thorington said. “But she will have to be more frugal than the last one.”

  His eyes, as they met Alex’s over the rim of his glass, spoke volumes. He’d been trapped into marrying his first wife, likely by the curse deciding that he needed an heiress. But the woman had spent increasingly vast sums on clothes and jewels — had the curse finally decided she was more of a debt than an asset?

  “Condolences on your loss,” Alex said.

  Thorington finished his wine and reached for the bottle. “It’s a shame you haven’t married yet, Salford. I’m sure you could do better than I did.”

  It was an insult, since Thorington knew Alex couldn’t marry. “Thank you for your concern, but I’ve no wish to do so.”

  Thorington smirked at the mention of a wish, but the other men didn’t notice it. “You should think about marriage, Salford,” Nick said, not looking up from his cards. “It may surprise you how good it can be.”

  Ferguson nodded. “For once my esteemed brother-in-law speaks the truth. Marry Miss Etchingham, if you don’t want to waste time courting someone. I’m sure she’d take you.”

  “She didn’t want me,” Malcolm said, sounding almost affronted. “Not that I mind. But she can be a cold one.”

  Alex glared at him. “The lady deserves more than you, just as she doesn’t deserve your insults.”

  Ferguson tapped his fingers on the table. “Kind of you to defend her. You cou
ld do worse, you know.”

  “If she isn’t a harpy and won’t run through your money, she sounds like a paragon to me,” Thorington said.

  Alex didn’t like the sudden gleam in Thorington’s eyes — as though he had heard of some new object for his collection. He couldn’t risk giving Thorington any more reason to think of Prudence. “I’ve no interest there. Too busy with my studies to waste time with a bride.”

  “Scholars,” Ferguson said in disgust.

  Malcolm snorted. “You read more than any scholar I know, Duke.”

  “No need to insult me by using my title, MacCabe,” Ferguson said, drunk enough to be distracted away from his attack on Alex’s marital state. “I’ll call you out for it.”

  “If you call me out, who will I use as my second?” Malcolm complained.

  “Last time I seconded for you, you nearly shot me instead of your foe,” Ferguson said. “I might as well fight you in a duel so I have a chance to shoot you instead.”

  Malcolm laughed and finished off his glass. When he set it down, he dragged a bit of the cloth across the table, knocking over Nick’s cards. The marquess cursed, then looked up and joined the conversation as though he’d never left it. “Talking of scholars, are we? That reminds me, Salford — my wife asked me to pass a message to you.”

  Alex suspected that any message Ellie wanted to pass to him wasn’t one that he wanted Thorington to hear. But there was no way to stop Nick from speaking. He was already digging into his jacket.

  “She said to give this to you straight away,” he said, handing Alex a crumpled piece of paper that had been folded over and sealed with wax. “Don’t tell her I forgot or I’ll gut you.”

  “Less than three months into your marriage and she’s got you delivering messages to another man?” Malcolm asked. “You’re already sunk, my friend.”

  Nick smiled and went back to his house of cards. “Ellie can speak to whomever she wants. Makes no difference to me.”

  There was a wealth of trust in his voice — not the carelessness of a man who neither loved his wife nor cared who she was with, but the certainty of one who knew that she could spend time with a hundred men and never be tempted away from him.