Lady Ruthless (Notorious Ladies of London Book 1)

by Scarlett Scott

  Lady Ruthless

  Notorious Ladies of London Book One

  By

  Scarlett Scott

  Lady Calliope Manning is determined to punish the man she holds responsible for her beloved brother’s death. She will do anything in her power to destroy him. When rumors swirl that the Earl of Sinclair requires a wealthy bride to rescue himself from dire financial straits, she seizes the opportunity to ruin him at last.

  Justin “Sin” Vaughn, Earl of Sinclair, needs to marry an heiress, and he needs to marry one now. But the sudden, anonymous publication of salacious memoirs rumored to be his obliterates his chances. With polite society convinced he is a murderer, he has only one choice: find the person behind his supposed memoirs and get his revenge.

  Callie never expected Lord Sinclair to discover she wrote Confessions of a Sinful Earl. Or to abduct her and demand restitution in the form of her own hand in marriage. She definitely did not expect to find him so difficult to resist…

  Sin is about to teach the beautiful, perfidious Lady Callie a lesson in ruthlessness. One scorching-hot kiss at a time.

  Dedication

  For my Sassy Readers

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  About the Book

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Excerpt from Lady Wallflower

  Don’t miss Scarlett’s other romances!

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  How dare the Duke of W. and my wife betray me? My confrontation with His Grace had done nothing to allay my furious need for vengeance. Nor could it stop the darkness in my soul. The solution I arrived upon was a final one, dear reader. It was death.

  ~from Confessions of a Sinful Earl

  London, 1885

  Lady Calliope Manning, sister to the Duke of Westmorland, social darling, and one cunning, vicious harridan, was about to learn that when a man had nothing left to lose, he was bloody well dangerous.

  She was also about to learn that her efforts in chasing off all his future marital prospects had been for naught.

  And that telling the world the Earl of Sinclair had killed the previous Duke of Westmorland and his former countess both came with ramifications. Dire ones.

  Sin waited in the shadows as Lady Calliope left her publisher’s office and moved toward her waiting carriage. She was so accustomed to running wild all over Town and doing whatever she pleased, she did not even bother to cast a glance around her. If she had, mayhap she would have seen him watching.

  Mayhap she would have known how much trouble she would soon find herself mired in. Or, at least, she may have had an inkling. But because the self-absorbed chit had never had to worry a day in her life about how she would afford her silk Worth gowns fresh from Paris or her lavish balls or live with a roof over her damned head that was not leaking, she never looked.

  She never saw him coming.

  Nor did she appear to take note that her driver had been replaced with a man he trusted. A man who had been paid with what little funds Sin had remaining at his disposal to drive them to the country. Her driver would have come to by now, suffering from the very devil of a headache in a nearby alleyway thanks to Brinton’s left hook.

  Sin strode forward, timing his every action with utmost care. One false step, one precipitous move, and all his plans—and indeed, his only chance at saving himself—would be dashed. She was nearly within the carriage now, her back to him, foot on the step. Sin caught her waist in his hands, his grip firm, and shoved her inside.

  She made a startled cry as she heaved forward in a mess of skirts and petticoats, sprawling over the Moroccan leather squabs. Sin joined her in the carriage and slammed the door, then knocked on the roof. He sat on the bench opposite her as the conveyance swung into motion.

  Just in time for her to scramble around, terror on her pretty, treacherous face. The fear was chased quite neatly by recognition. Her lips parted on a gasp.

  “Lord Sinclair? What the devil do you think you are doing in my carriage?” she demanded.

  “I am abducting you,” he told her with a sangfroid that was owed partly to the whisky he had swallowed to fortify him just prior to this mission of desperation. And partly to his desire to make the alarm return to her features.

  She scoffed. “You cannot abduct me, my lord.”

  So much for her alarm. But there was plenty of time to draw blood. The journey ahead was long.

  Sin held up his hands, gesturing to the interior of the carriage. “Observe, Lady Calliope.”

  She raised a dark, elegant brow. “All I see before me is an interloper in my carriage. What are you doing here, Lord Sinclair? Do you not have an innocent to debauch? Some opium to eat? Another murder to plot?”

  He was going to enjoy destroying this despicable creature.

  Sin gave her his most feral smile. “You have been paying attention to my reputation, my lady. I am all aflutter.”

  “I hardly pay you any attention at all.” She frowned at him, her dark eyes flashing with defiant fire. “You are beneath my notice.”

  Lying witch.

  “Indeed, Lady Calliope?” He reached into his coat and calmly extracted the blade he had secreted there for just this purpose. For her. He tested the point at the tip with his thumb, watching her.

  Her gaze had fallen to the blade. Beneath her hat, which had been knocked askew when he had shoved her into the carriage, her skin paled.

  “Why do you have a weapon?” she asked.

  “Perhaps I am plotting your murder,” he suggested, slowly running his thumb down the length of the blade. “Since I have already killed your brother.”

  She stiffened. “If you think to do me harm, my lord—”

  “Has no one informed you it is poor form to threaten the fellow with the knife?” he interrupted. “Tut, tut, Lady Calliope.”

  “I daresay no one has ever wielded a knife in my presence,” she snapped. “What is this about, Lord Sinclair? I have other calls to make today, and you are wasting my time with your nonsense.”

  How she deluded herself.

  “There will be no other calls.” He stroked his thumb back down the blade, this time with too much force.

  He knew a quick sting in the fleshy pad, followed by the wetness of his blood. What irony. The first blood he had drawn was his own.

  “You cut yourself,” she gasped. “You are bleeding everywhere.”

  So he had, and so he was.

  “It is a minor scratch,” he said, unconcerned. “It will stop. This knife is very sharp, Lady Calliope. I would hate to have to use it upon your tender flesh, to cut you.”

  “You are attempting to frighten me,” she countered, her eyes narrowing. “I do not know what you want or why, but surely you must realize this is madness and it needs to end at once.” She rapped at the ceiling then. “Lewis! Stop this carriage.”

  He laug
hed, the sound bitter. “Do you truly think I would be stupid enough to abduct you with your own driver?”

  Confusion stole over her expressive face.

  It was a pity he hated her so much, because Lady Calliope Manning was one of the most stunning women he had ever beheld. Stunning and deceitful and reckless. He would crush her before this war she had begun was over between them.

  “What have you done with Lewis?” she asked, fear making her voice tremble.

  All her bravado leached away.

  Good. Perhaps she was beginning to realize the gravity of her situation.

  “Mayhap I killed him, like the others,” he growled. “Like my wife. Your brother. That is what you think, is it not, my lady? That is what you wrote for all the world to read and believe, pretending to be me.”

  She went paler still. “I do not know what you are speaking of.”

  “The false memoirs you have been writing and publishing in regular, despicable little serials,” he elaborated, bringing his cut thumb to his mouth and sucking the blood clean. Copper flooded his tongue. “Confessions of a Sinful Earl, I believe you titled the deceitful tripe. Not terribly clever of you, but then, your sole intention was to make certain everyone had no question in their minds that your vicious fictions were about me, is that not right?”

  “I read the memoirs along with the rest of London, but I am not the author, my lord,” she denied.

  He had known she would not confess her sins easily. He was prepared to refute her claims. He had been waiting. Watching. Preparing. Lord knew he had nothing else to do since all the doors in London had been closed to him.

  “And yet, I just caught you paying your weekly call to the offices of J.M. White and Sons, the same publisher of Confessions,” he countered.

  “J.M. White and Sons publishes pamphlets for the Lady’s Suffrage Society.” Her response was quick. “That is the reason I pay calls there regularly.”

  He smiled. “An excellent excuse for your trips, is it not? But how do you explain the manuscripts in your bedchamber at Westmorland House, Lady Calliope?”

  Her eyes widened. And an expression stole over her face then, one he imagined mirrored that of a wild beast staring down its hunter. “How would you know what is in my chamber?”

  His smile deepened, along with his triumph. “Because I was there. I saw it myself.”

  But his triumph was short-lived. Because in the next breath, the virago launched herself at him.

  Callie knew the Earl of Sinclair was desperate.

  She knew he was dangerous.

  She believed he had murdered her beloved brother and his own countess, who had been engaged in an affaire and had mysteriously died on the same day in suspicious circumstances.

  And she also knew she had unwittingly led the wolf straight to her door. Now, he was out for blood. But she was damned if she was going to allow him to spirit her away somewhere to do Lord knew what with her. Kill her? Because she was the author of Confessions of a Sinful Earl?

  It seemed unlikely he would commit murder again, with so many suspicions raised about him.

  Still, she was not taking any chances. Callie launched herself at him, hands balled into fists, pummeling his chest. But he was stronger than she was. He caught her wrists in an iron grip. Belatedly, she remembered the blade. His cut. Wetness smeared over her skin, over her madly flitting pulse.

  His blood.

  “That was foolish, Lady Calliope,” he snarled.

  He was right, she realized. She was astride his lap, and his relentless hold on her brought their faces near. He was a handsome devil. She could not deny it; there was a reason why the Earl of Sinclair was better known as Sin.

  Because he was the personification of it.

  “Unhand me,” she demanded with a bravado she did not feel.

  He had all the control.

  “I think I like you here, my lady.” His lip curled. “How does it feel to be at my mercy? I daresay you do not like it.”

  His breath was hot. She felt it on her lips. It was also scented with spirits.

  “Are you drunk, Lord Sinclair?” she asked instead of answering his question.

  His appetite for pleasure was renowned. Excess in all forms. Little wonder the former Lady Sinclair had sought solace in Alfred. Her brother had been kind and good. Everything this beautiful, cruel waste of flesh was not.

  “Far too sober,” he said, his brown gaze so dark it was almost obsidian. “Am I going to have to tie you up? I had not wanted to, but admittedly, there is something so very pleasing about the thought of your wrists and ankles bound. About making you as helpless as you sought to make me.”

  She tugged at her wrists, struggling to free herself without any effect. He was immobile. “I do not know what lunacy you are spouting. I did not write those memoirs.”

  “Your denials are as useless as your attempts at escape.” His voice was low, his expression an impenetrable mask. “I was inside your chamber. I saw the drafts on your writing desk.”

  How had he gotten into her chamber? Was he bluffing? How did he know she had a writing desk? Or that it was where she kept her drafts of Confessions of a Sinful Earl?

  The questions were endless. Too many for her brain to work through.

  Most immediate was the pressing need for escape. She knew where men were most vulnerable. She moved quickly, attempting to strike him in the groin with her knee.

  But he anticipated her movements, and steered her away. Her knee connected with his inner thigh instead.

  “Release me, you lunatic!” she cried out, thrashing against him wildly.

  Her fear was very real now, a bitter, metallic taste in her mouth. Her heart pounded. When he had first invaded her carriage, she had been startled, but when he had blithely announced his intention to abduct her, and when the carriage had not slowed when she had demanded Lewis bring them to a halt, and when Lord Sinclair had removed that wicked, gleaming blade, her calm had fled.

  With a suddenness that stole her breath, the earl moved them both, whipping her around so she was on the bench and he straddled her lap. He pinned her there with the strength of his big body.

  “I think we both know which of us is the lunatic in this carriage, madam, and it damned well is not me,” he growled as he reached into his coat and extracted a cord.

  Dear God. What did he intend to do?

  She shrank back into the squabs and renewed her efforts to escape him. But it was fruitless. She was out of breath, outmatched by Sinclair in strength. She could not fight him off her. He looped the cord around her wrists and knotted it with a haste that suggested the action was familiar to him.

  Her wrists were bound.

  “You cannot abduct me,” she told him, hating herself for the tremble in her voice.

  He bared his teeth, looking like nothing so much as a lion she had once seen in a menagerie. “I already did.”

  Fear ricocheted through her. Sinclair was serious. He was carting her off somewhere and for some nefarious purpose she could only guess at. Strike that—for a nefarious purpose she had no wish to guess at.

  “You are mad,” she gasped, still struggling beneath his weight, desperate to free herself.

  A feat which was becoming less and less likely by the moment.

  “I am perfectly lucid,” he sneered. “Which is far more than I can say for you, Lady Calliope. Your actions have certainly been those of a madwoman. What did you hope to accomplish by blackening my name and filling pages with vicious lies about me? Did it entertain you? Were you bored in your castle, princess?”

  He spat the last as if it were an epithet.

  The vitriol emanating from him was as potent as it was lethal. The Earl of Sinclair despised her.

  “I do not know what you are speaking of, my lord,” she maintained, breathless from her attempts at escape. Her heart was pounding faster than the hooves of the horses beyond the carriage. “If you allow me to return home, I will never speak a word of this to anyone. I promise
. It is not too late to put a stop to these plans of yours, whatever they may be.”

  He laughed, the sound dark and relentless, sending a chill down her spine. “You can cease your false protestations of innocence at any time. I know beyond a doubt you are the author of the memoirs. Did you believe I would sit idly by whilst my life became fodder for scurrilous gossip and all the doors in London closed to me? Did you truly imagine I would not do everything in my power to prove I am not a murderer?”

  His voice trembled with fury, cutting as the lash of a whip.

  “You cannot possibly have proof I am the author of those serials,” she snapped.

  She had been careful. So very careful. Only Mr. White knew she was the author of Confessions. He had promised her his utmost discretion, and she trusted him. Not even her beloved and overprotective brother, Benny, the Duke of Westmorland, knew the truth.

  “The younger Mr. White sang like a bird when introduced to my fists,” Sinclair told her calmly, jerking her bound wrists to an ivory handle on the interior of the carriage and securing them to it with another series of knots.

  He was not wearing gloves. She stared at his knuckles as he worked. His fingers were long, his hands large. She did not doubt he could inflict a great deal of damage with them.

  The senior Mr. White had promised her he had not shared her identity with anyone. Was it possible he had told his son? Mr. Reginald White was a thin, frail-looking gentleman. She had only met him once, but she was quite certain the massive brute abducting her would decimate him with one blow.

  “Nothing to say, princess?” he taunted.

  “Get off me,” she gritted.

  She was unaccustomed to having a man in her lap, and he was deuced heavy. Not to mention terrifying.

  He raised a dark brow, that gaze of his sweeping over her, filling her with a curious combination of cold and heat all at once. “Are you going to behave yourself now?”

  Never.

  “Of course,” she lied through clenched teeth.

  He finally removed his weight from her body, returning to the other bench with a sigh. “You will not escape those knots, and your legs are too short to reach me. I suppose I may as well settle in for our journey.”