The Earl Who Played With Fire

by Sara Ramsey

  She loved him. It was the only choice she’d ever made that really mattered. It wasn’t a vow in a church or a signature on a contract, but she was bound to him in a way that made all the rest of it seem superfluous.

  She just had to find a way to win him.

  She waited until his breath grew less ragged, until he no longer slumped against her like a dead man. “Wake up, Alex,” she said, touching him on the shoulder.

  “I should punch you for disturbing this dream,” he muttered.

  She brushed the hair away from him eyes. “Next time. I must tell you what I found.”

  “Now?” he said. He gestured toward their mutual dishabille. “I need an hour to recover, at least.”

  “We do not have an hour. I must return to Ellie’s before her at-home callers arrive.”

  He gave an exaggerated sigh, then stood and pulled her to her feet. “What did you find?” he asked, rearranging his shirt and beginning to button his breeches.

  She shifted her skirt and petticoats around her, then patted the back of her hair to see how badly it was mussed. “I found a letter that references your dagger. I wrote to my correspondent to verify it, and he agreed that he knew all about it.”

  His hands stopped buttoning. “Who wrote the letter?”

  She said it quickly, casually, hoping he wouldn’t press for more details. “Mr. Ostringer. He seems to know the provenance of every object to come through London in the last twenty years.”

  Alex scowled as he finished with his breeches. “You should not have been writing to him. He is utterly without scruples.”

  “Well, how was I to know that before?” she said. “In any case, his letters were delightful — always full of the most interesting gossip about scholarly circles.”

  It was why she had gone to him when she first considered selling fake goods. But Alex seemed skeptical. “Ostringer is a gossip? I thought he keeps all his information close to the vest.”

  She stooped to retrieve her gloves. “Perhaps he thought I was safe to share with, since I said I would never come to London.”

  “What did he say about the dagger?”

  “In the first letter, I had asked him whether he thought there was any truth to the various myths that have been passed down through the ages. He thought there was. He mentioned King Midas and speculated that it was a dagger that had granted the wish and caused the man’s woes. He said he had seen such a piece in Egypt years before, but had refrained from acquiring it.”

  “I very much doubt Ostringer would have refrained,” Alex snorted.

  She tried not to turn defensive, but she didn’t succeed very well. “He said the dagger’s power was too dangerous to have it in one’s possession. As you and Thorington discovered, if I’m not mistaken.”

  He shrugged into his jacket, but he seemed to have trouble pulling it over the tension in his shoulders. “True. But just because he saw it doesn’t mean he knows the cure.”

  She walked back to the table and opened her reticule. “I wrote to him yesterday to verify it, and he said that he would be happy to tell me about the cure for the curse.” She pulled the letter out of her bag and handed it to him. “Read what he wrote, if you like. If you think it is not important enough to merit a conversation with him, then we shall pretend I never mentioned it.”

  “If you think I can pretend that today didn’t happen, you are sadly mistaken,” he said, with a leer that made her laugh. But he unfolded the letter.

  The way his eyebrows furrowed, then lifted, gave her the answer before he said anything.

  Still, he didn’t seem inclined to believe it. “I’ll grant this sounds like the dagger in my study,” he allowed, folding the letter again. “But his allusion to a cure could be another myth.”

  Ostringer had said that the cure was readily available, but impossible to execute successfully. She sighed as she took the letter back. “Don’t you think it worth the time to talk to him? He is the only clue we have.”

  Alex clubbed his hair away from his face. A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I have had promising clues before. This will likely turn out as all the others have. And besides, I asked Ostringer about it years ago. He didn’t say anything about a cure.”

  “We must try, though.”

  “We do not have to do anything. I will go talk to the man.”

  His voice was harsh. She frowned. She hadn’t told him how well she knew Ostringer, but she would have to risk Alex finding out if she wanted him to find the cure. “Isn’t he more likely to give us the truth if I am the one to visit him? After all, he seems willing to gossip with me but hasn’t shared anything of import with you.”

  “He’s willing to gossip with Chandlord,” Alex said. “Not you.”

  She sighed in frustration. Ostringer already knew her identity, but Alex didn’t know about their connection. “I’ll tell him that I am Chandlord.”

  “No. I don’t want to endanger you. Ostringer is utterly ruthless. And you are already in enough danger without adding him to the mix.”

  He pulled his gloves on, then rubbed his thumb across his palm. She sighed. “I just want to help.”

  “You can help by staying out of harm’s way. And that includes not trying to seduce me. If something happened to you and it was my fault…”

  He trailed off. She didn’t know what he was feeling, exactly, but she thought she had some clue because of the way her own heart kept missing beats. “Then you should understand how I would feel if I had the power to break your curse but had to give you up instead.”

  Alex paused for the longest time, looking down at his hand rather than into her eyes. But when he finally looked up, she saw a mix of resignation and resolve.

  “Very well. Send a note to Ostringer and ask for an appointment tomorrow. He won’t see you without one. But I will do the interview with him myself.”

  She nodded, willing to save the rest of the argument for the morning. “Will I see you tonight? I believe Ellie and I are attending Lady Andover’s musicale.”

  “I must work. But send word when you know what time Ostringer wants to see me tomorrow. I will be at home all night.”

  She reached for her veil, not ready to leave, but knowing she had to. If they couldn’t find a cure, at least she would have the memory of this afternoon — not perfect, but perhaps a perfect portrait of who they were together.

  Before she could cover herself, Alex suddenly pulled her into his arms. He kissed her again, hard and thorough.

  But for all the passion on their lips, the kiss felt like a farewell.

  “Never doubt that I loved you, Prudence,” he said hoarsely as he pulled away.

  Then he was gone, leaving before she could respond. Her hands trembled as she wrapped the veil around her face.

  She no longer doubted. But it wasn’t lost on her that he made their love sound like the past, not the future.

  He didn’t think there was a cure. Which meant she would have to prove him wrong…

  Or she might die when he was proven right.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Prudence had barely crossed the threshold of Folkestone House when Ellie’s butler handed her a most unwelcome card.

  It was the perfect weight, shape, and color. The printing was bold and black, with one word engraved precisely in the center.

  She refrained from rolling her eyes, but only barely. “Tell his grace that I will attend to him in twenty minutes,” she said to the butler.

  He nodded. She wanted to send a note to Ostringer straight away, before she and Alex lost any more time. She also needed to change out of her ridiculous gown. The maid she had taken with her to the public house had already disappeared upstairs to lay out a new dress.

  But to reach her room on the third floor, she had to take the stairs past the second floor. And Thorington apparently wasn’t of a mind to wait in the drawing room in which he had been placed. He lounged against the wall near the staircase instead, stopping her before she could turn to the next flight of
stairs.

  “My dear Miss Etchingham,” he said, executing a perfect bow. “I am delighted to find you well.”

  She curtsied on instinct, but her voice couldn’t stay polite. “How do you know I am well? Perhaps I have a headache.”

  His eyes roved over her body, taking in the drab black dress and the hat and veil in her hand. “You look perfectly well, albeit shabby. Are you in mourning? Don’t tell me we must put off the wedding.”

  She thought of lying, but Thorington surely had a copy of Debrett’s — he would be able to discover if she created a family member only to kill them off. So she tried for an assault instead. “I am mourning my last days of freedom. If you will excuse me, I prefer to spend them in quiet reflection.”

  She’d overdone it. He laughed instead of heeding her request. “You should spend your last days of freedom visiting the modiste. Ask Lady Folkestone to help you. She dresses well enough, although you won’t need as many masquerade costumes as she has.”

  Prudence frowned. “Does it ever occur to you that the people around you would be happier if you didn’t try to order their lives?”

  “Ah, you might think that.” He took her arm before she could stop him and half-escorted, half-dragged her into the drawing room, where a tea cart waited for them. “But most people do not want a choice. They say they want it. In truth, they are happy enough to have someone decide events for them.”

  “I am not one of those people,” she said, pulling her arm away from him. “And I still am very angry about the way you took advantage of me at the Duchess of Rothwell’s ball.”

  “I am sure you are,” he said, leaning against the mantelpiece when she refused to sit. “Which is why, my dear, you are the only wife I want. If you were dazzled by my charm and fortune, I would be bored of you within a fortnight.”

  “You know nothing about me,” she said, her voice fraying. “We haven’t exchanged more than a few words beyond your multiple proposals. And what I’ve seen of your character does not make me eager to wed you.”

  He crossed one leg over the other. “I know all I need to know. You’re intelligent enough to converse with, pretty enough to give me a decent looking heir, and poor enough that you’ll eventually be grateful for everything I can give you. And you’re pragmatic enough that you’ll someday forget Salford. Did I forget any qualifications?”

  She eyed the fireplace poker and had a brief, dark daydream of hitting him over the head with it. He saw where her eyes went and laughed. “Ah, and your temper. Strong enough to be entertaining, not murderous enough to harm me.”

  She wanted to harm him, though. She made a show of sitting next to the tea cart and arranging her skirts around her as though she was a queen on display, not the shabby spinster he knew her to be. Then, acting on some mad impulse, she went for his throat. “I am not actually poor, your grace.”

  His smirk evaporated. “You are. Everyone knows it.”

  She shrugged and poured herself a cup of tea. “I recently came into an extravagant sum. Are you prepared to marry an heiress?”

  His brows slammed together as he sifted through everyone in the ton who had died that year and tried to guess who might have left her money. “Impossible,” he said flatly, once he had considered them all.

  “Not impossible,” she said, reaching for the lemon slices Ellie’s housekeeper had procured for her. “Men do spend silly amounts of money on rare objects. I never expected someone to bid fifty thousand pounds for a mere rock, though.”

  Thorington reached her in three strides, so fast that she shrank back and dropped a lemon slice on the carpet. “Tell me what you mean,” he demanded, leaning over her chair and pinning her with his eyes.

  If it were Alex, this might be thrilling. But with Thorington, she was annoyed — and a little scared. “The rock wasn’t real. But I suppose it proved to me that the curse exists. Marrying me will restore your fortune, won’t it?”

  He stepped back from her just as suddenly as he’d approached, as though the very air she breathed had been fouled. “You cannot be telling the truth. Did Salford tell you to say this to me? If you think it will make me release you from our engagement, madam, you are very much mistaken.”

  He was furious. She should have been smug, but again, the tic in his jaw made her too wary for jubilation. “It is true. And Salford had nothing to do with it. He doesn’t know. But if it is any consolation, he may have been more upset than you when he guessed that the Aramaic didn’t hold a cure for him.”

  Thorington eyed her like he’d just cut the head off a hydra and expected her to sprout two more. “The curse always had a sense of humor,” he said. “Almost admirable, if it weren’t so evil.”

  “Are you describing the curse or yourself?” she asked, trying to reclaim her stability by lashing out at him.

  His grin wasn’t evil — it was real, for once, just long enough that she wondered what the duke might have been like if he had lived a normal life rather than a cursed one.

  But the grin was gone before she could analyze it. “Call me evil if you wish, my dear. But despite your perfidy about the stone, our wedding date is set. St. George’s was only free four days hence, which is unfashionably soon, but it shall have to do. Tell me you have a better dress than that to wear, or I shall drag you to the modiste myself.”

  Four days. “Impossible, your grace,” she said. “I need a month at least.”

  “We shall marry in four days,” he said, utterly unmoved. “But I will be kind and give you time to accustom yourself to me before we consummate our union. A month seems like a fine span — long enough for you to realize that being a duchess is better than being a peasant, and long enough for me to know whether you’re carrying Salford’s child. I’ll claim it, of course — would be too much of a scandal not to, and I will never toss my duchess out on her ear no matter how much she deserves it. Still, it is nice to know if there’s a cuckoo in one’s nest.”

  He examined his cuticles as he gave this speech, as though the thought of her bearing his enemy’s bastard child was as inconsequential as the possibility of a rain shower in April. But she just barely restrained her gasp. “How are you so cruel?” she asked. “You cannot be this cruel. No one is.”

  He looked up at her. “I do not enjoy it, if that is what concerns you. But the world runs more smoothly if I am allowed to arrange it. And I find I can arrange it better if I do not allow my emotions to get involved. Too much messiness ensues. I hate a mess.”

  “This is a mess,” she said frankly.

  He shrugged. “I will fix it. You will marry me, I will have my fifty thousand pounds back, we will settle into domestic torpor, and this mess will disappear.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “That isn’t a marriage.”

  “It will be for us,” he said. “I think we will like each other tolerably enough. You aren’t so different from me, you know.”

  “That’s not true. I would never force someone like you have.”

  Thorington smirked. “Would you never trick a friend into selling something she shouldn’t have?”

  “It…that’s not the same.”

  “No? Would you never lie to the man you claim to love? Telling yourself it’s for his own good? Arranging everything to give yourself the best possible advantage?”

  She would have clapped her hands over her ears if she could do so without giving herself away. Her stomach dropped and breathing didn’t seem to help her. “I had a good reason for creating that stone.”

  “And I have a good reason for marrying you. Several, now that I know you have my money. Admit it, love — we deserve each other.”

  “I’m not your love. And it’s not the same.”

  He pulled his watch from his pocket, checked it against Ellie’s clock on the mantel, and snapped it shut again. “Continue to tell yourself that if it helps. I must be off. I will take care of the marriage contracts — send word if there is something specific you wish to address. And find a dress that isn’t quite so ho
rrid with your complexion — green, perhaps. It wouldn’t do to shroud your beauty when half the ton will be watching.”

  He kissed her hand and left before she could stop gaping at him. The man was a menace.

  But he was a very intelligent, very perceptive menace.

  Ellie poked her head around the door. “I saw Thorington leave. How are you feeling?”

  Prudence felt like she’d been hit in the head with a brick. But she tried for levity. “I feel glad that we live in the modern age. If that man could have, I’m sure he would have carted me off and forced me to marry him at swordpoint.”

  Her friend laughed, but there was sympathy in her eyes. “I can’t say I’m sorry that you will be a duchess — you will make an excellent one. But I still find it hard to believe that Thorington pursued you so aggressively. I thought he would stay unmarried forever after the warfare he had with his last wife.”

  “He seems to think that marrying me will keep anyone else from being able to trick him into matrimony. Ironic that he’s done it by tricking me into matrimony, but he isn’t the sanest man, is he?”

  “Ah.” Ellie retreated into the hall for a moment, which was odd — until Prudence heard more footsteps coming toward them and had her explanation.

  Ellie had called in reinforcements. Madeleine and Amelia entered with her, and Prudence suddenly felt descended upon. Whether they were guardian angels or avenging spirits was still unclear.

  “We have come to help you plan,” Amelia announced, pulling a piece of paper out of her reticule and asking Ellie for a pen and ink.

  Madeleine gave Prudence a quick hug before taking over her duties with the tea cart. “What Amelia means to say, I’m sure, is that we are eager to help you in whatever way you need us to.”

  “There’s no need to help,” she protested. “And besides, I’m not sure what I would want help with.”

  Ellie took the sheet of paper away from Amelia and gave her a pillow for her back instead. “No need for lists until we know what Prudence wants.”