The Heart of a Scoundrel

by Christi Caldwell

  “He is not dead,” the woman said dryly. “Though it would hardly be a loss if he was,” she muttered. She held her hand out. “My name is Jane. I am the Marchioness of Waverly.”

  Phoebe’s eyebrows shot up. Though she’d yet to meet the marchioness, she’d heard whispers of the scandal that had found this illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Ravenscourt wedded to the marquess. There was a slight challenge in the woman’s eyes, as though she expected Phoebe to find her in some way wanting. Alas, the young lady did not realize that she had long ago learned to look to each person’s worth. Phoebe eyed the other marchioness’ gloved fingertips a moment and then placed her hand in the woman’s, allowing her to help her over. “Th-thank you,” she murmured. Phoebe alternated her gaze between the unconscious man at their feet and her slippers. “I-I it was not…I…” She dropped her gaze to her mussed gown and captured her lower lip between her teeth.

  “It was not your fault,” the woman put in. There was a steely strength to those words that rang with conviction and somehow calmed her. And this woman who’d weathered her own scandal rose even higher in her estimation. “No, it was not your fault.” The Marchioness of Waverly kicked the man with the tip of her slipper at his lower back. In his slumberous state, he groaned. “There are some men, however, who think a woman is there for their pleasures and it matters not what that woman wishes.”

  That matter-of-factness spoke of a woman who knew. Phoebe’s throat worked at the sudden kindred connection she felt to this stranger. “Thank you,” she said quietly. With quaking fingers she struggled to put her hair to rights. “Please, let me.” Placing her gentle but firm hands on her shoulders, she turned her about and set to work rearranging the tangled tresses. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, as Phoebe flinched.

  At their feet, the viscount emitted a long groan and she jumped. The marchioness took her by the hand and guided her over to the door. “Come with me. I will call for your carriage. Is your…?” Husband. Pain knotted Phoebe’s belly. Pink bloomed on the other woman’s cheeks. No doubt she recalled that Phoebe was the famed Marchioness of Rutland. Of course her husband was not present. “Do you have someone to escort you home?” the woman amended.

  Phoebe gave her head a jerky shake, her gaze fixed on the gleaming, gold pendant at the woman’s neck. She stared absently at that heart. Her unwed friends had come with their chaperones and respective parents. Jane pulled the door open and peered out into the hall. With Phoebe in tow, she all but dragged her from the room, down the hall, and onward away from the White Parlor. Each step that carried her from Lord Wentworth’s and the remembrance of the viscount’s assault left her more and more freed.

  They turned the corridor just as a tall, commanding figure stepped into their path. A startled shriek escaped them as the frowning, dark-haired gentleman looked back and forth between them with a question in his eyes. His gaze lingered a moment upon Phoebe’s torn gown and a dark glint flared in his eyes.

  The marchioness slapped a hand to her heart. “Gabriel.” She looked to Phoebe and gave her a reassuring smile. “It is just my husband.” The woman returned her attention to her husband. “Gabriel, this is my friend,” her throat worked, “Phoebe, the Marchioness of Rutland.” His eyebrows shot up in surprise, but he gave no other outward indication as to his shock at the legendary marquess’ new wife.

  “My lady,” he greeted.

  Phoebe managed to sketch a hasty curtsy. A panicky laugh bubbled up in her chest at the ridiculousness of the pleasantries here in the hall, following the viscount’s attack. Then, they were members of polite Society and were to wear a cool smile and calm expression even if the world was tipped upside down.

  The marchioness cleared her throat. “Gabriel, will you see that Lady Rutland’s carriage is readied? I will remain here.”

  He narrowed his gaze and looked down the hall, as though searching out the one responsible for her current state. She pressed her eyes closed at the humiliation of having this indignity witnessed by not one, but two, strangers. With a short bow, the gentleman turned on his heel and left.

  A short while later, Phoebe boarded her carriage. As the conveyance rumbled away from Lady Wentworth’s ball she recalled the viscount’s words, the vile accusations about Edmund lashing at her mind like venomous barbs. She pulled back the velvet curtain and stared blankly out. Edmund had promised that marriage to her would, at the very least, provide her protection. With an arrogance that could only come from being the feared, famed, Marquess of Rutland, he’d expected his reputation should offer her a semblance of polite courtesy from the ton.

  It appeared he’d added one more lie to the mountains of others to come before.

  *

  With a growl of impatience, Edmund took the steps of his townhouse two at a time. After an infernal night at his club, and then a blasted appearance at Lady Wentworth’s tedious ball and then upon discovering his wife had the good sense to leave the infernal affair, a swift departure, he wanted to see his damned wife. Wallace, faithful as the day was long, pulled the door open in anticipation of his arrival. And he didn’t like that he needed to see Phoebe. Giving a quick search of the foyer, he shrugged out of his cloak and handed it over to a waiting footman. But more than that, he didn’t like that he hadn’t seen her.

  He looked up the staircase.

  “Her Ladyship arrived earlier this evening, my lord. She’s taken to her chambers.”

  Edmund made to go, but something in the man’s rheumy eyes gave him pause. “Say whatever it is you would, Wallace,” he snapped. He knew he was being a foul-tempered bastard in taking his frustrations out on the loyal servant, but he’d have the man out with his disappointment and not this vague game he’d played through the years of hoping he would suddenly become the man he wanted him to be.

  Wallace looked off to the waiting footman and with a polite bow, the man left. “Her Ladyship did not seem herself,” Wallace said when he returned his attention to Edmund.

  “What do you mean she did not seem herself?” he asked with a frown. Furthermore, Wallace had known Phoebe but two days. How much could he truly know where the lady was concerned?

  The butler cleared his throat. “She was crying.”

  Guilt turned in his gut and cleaved at his conscience. It twisted inside him, forming a pebble in his belly that sat hard inside. This deuced caring business was blasted awful. By the tilt of the other man’s head, Edmund knew there was something Wallace wished him to say. “Crying,” he forced himself to respond.

  “Yes, my lord. Crying. Tears.”

  “I know what crying is, Wallace,” he said with a touch of impatience.

  “Of course, my lord.”

  He cast another glance up the stairs. It was because of him. Of course it is because of me. From the moment he entered her life, he doomed her to despair. The pebble became a stone. “And how did you…know Her Ladyship was crying?”

  “Red eyes, my lord. Very red.”

  With a black curse, Edmund took the stairs two at a time, then strode down the hall, coming to a stop outside Phoebe’s chambers. He laid his forehead against the door. That afternoon he’d run from all her earlier talk of love and hope and happiness. Like the bloody coward he’d been all these years, only to hover at her doorway like a child with his ear to the keyhole, only to find he could not escape it. All the walls he’d erected these past years had been nothing more than sugar towers, toppled with the first hint of true warmth and goodness in his life. She’d asked him to set aside years of who he’d been. Could a person simply change?

  He pressed his eyes closed. He wanted that answer to be yes. A shuddery sob split the wood panel and gutted him worse than the tip of Stanhope’s rapier those eleven years ago. He’d have taken that blasted blade to his heart this instant if it would mean Phoebe did not know pain. He didn’t know if he could be what she deserved or who she deserved—but he wanted to, at the very least, try. Edmund turned the handle and stepped inside.

  It took a moment f
or his eyes to adjust to the darkened chambers. The faintest glow of a lone candle atop Phoebe’s nightstand cast an eerie shadow upon the wall. He closed the door with a faint click and her sobs immediately ceased. She lay on her side with her back to him and made no move to look at him. “What do you want, Edmund?” she asked, her tone ragged with resignation.

  Edmund shifted back and forth on his feet. I want you. Except, years of protecting himself kept those words back. “I came to…Wallace said…” His lips pulled in a grimace. “I visited Lady Wentworth’s ball,” he settled for.

  Her slender back went taut, but she otherwise gave no outward reaction that she’d heard him.

  He cleared his throat. “I came to see you, to attend with you.”

  “Not with me,” she said, directing her words to the wall.

  Edmund stiffened.

  “You did not attend with me.”

  Edmund held his palms up, but with her back presented, she could not see them turned out in supplication.

  “Is there anything else you wish to say?” Those blank, emotionless words did not belong to Phoebe. But this is what he’d made her. Agony speared at his stomach.

  He let his hands fall to his side and cleared his throat. “That is all,” he said tersely.

  “Then go,” she said on a harsh whisper.

  Tugging at his lapels, Edmund turned on his heel and did the first honorable thing of his life—saved Phoebe from his useless offering of love.

  Chapter 25

  The following morning after attending to business with his man of affairs, Edmund returned to his townhouse. He strode up the steps with a heaviness to his footsteps. As diligent as always, Wallace pulled the door open in faithful anticipation of his employer’s arrival. With a murmur of thanks, he shrugged out of his cloak and handed it over to the old servant. He looked expectantly at the man more friend and father than his own sire had ever been.

  “She is in the drawing room receiving visitors,” Wallace supplied. “A Miss Honoria Fairfax and Lady Gillian.”

  Edmund glanced down the corridor leading to his office. Following his meeting, there were really matters he must attend to. He needed to speak to his servants and see to his ledgers. He lifted his head and then started for his office. He intended to continue to said affairs. To move right past the closed receiving room door where his wife met with her friends. He really intended to. “That bastard.”

  If that muffled curse didn’t reach through the door panel and freeze him in his tracks. As it was, he’d learned long ago the perils of listening at doors, but the fury lacing that word no polite lady ever uttered kept him rooted there. Not that he needed to remain outside, eavesdropping on his wife and her friends to know which gentleman earned the “that bastard” curse. Phoebe’s friends were loyal and likely well knew the extent of Edmund’s evil.

  He turned to go and allow Phoebe her privacy.

  “There could be benefits of marriage to him,” one of the young lady’s comments brought him to a stop outside the parlor. He wasn’t eavesdropping. He didn’t partake in such silly, nonsensical endeavors as…

  “Marriage shouldn’t be about benefits, but rather love and caring.”

  Edmund pressed his ear closer to the door. His wife’s oddly detached words brought a frown to his lips. Granted, she was, indeed, correct but grating nonetheless.

  “Surely there is some good in him,” his unwitting champion said defensively. He gave his head a rueful shake. Foolish girl.

  Phoebe laughed and this was the joyous, unadulterated sound he once remembered of her, before he’d gone and trapped her and shattered that exuberance with his ruthless plan for revenge. Pain tugged at his heart.

  “What is it?” the other young lady asked, concern lacing her tone.

  “Good in him? In a man who should use me in a game of revenge he’d exact against Honoria’s aunt, his former lover? I think not.”

  His frown deepened. He’d not taken Margaret as his lover. Which he supposed was neither here nor there, and yet, Phoebe believed that untruth and he wanted her to know that despite the many lovers he’d taken, her friend’s aunt had never been one of them. As though that would bring his innocent young wife any consolation, a voice jeered.

  He really should go. There was no point in visiting a room of three ladies who’d likely rather have his blood than his company. Edmund turned to go, again.

  “I for one imagine even one such as him would care a great deal.” The loyal defender of his worthless self, intoned. “You should tell him,” she added as an afterthought. The lady was incorrect in this regard. He didn’t care a great deal about anything. Except her. He cared about Phoebe. His wife’s murmured response was lost to the walls dividing them.

  As the garrulous one carried on, Edmund took a step toward his office. “A gentleman doesn’t like to have his wife going about being kissed by other men.”

  He froze. A crimson rage descended over his vision, momentarily blinding him and he wheeled slowly back around. That. He cared very much about that.

  “I for one agree with Gillian,” the more jaded, of the ladies chimed in. “A heartless cad such as the marquess will hardly tolerate another gentleman forcing his attentions on his wife.”

  The muscles in his body went taut. The crimson fury turned black until he breathed, tasted, and smelled the death of the man who’d touched Phoebe. A muscle jumped at the corner of his eye. The moment he discovered just who touched his wife, he’d hunt the bastard down and choke the breath from his worthless body for daring to put his hands upon the person that belonged to Edmund. A growl rumbled up from his chest.

  “What was that?”

  Silence reigned.

  Christ. Edmund turned and peered down the hall plotting his escape just as the door opened. A young lady peeked her head around the edge of the frame. Her eyes went wide. A dull flush heated his neck.

  “Oh, hullo,” the young lady said with a smile as though she hadn’t just discovered one of the darkest, most black-hearted lords in the realm listening at the keyhole. She turned back and called over her shoulder. “It is merely your husband, not some gossiping servant,” she said with such innocent cheer he winced.

  Edmund moved woodenly through the doorway, keeping his face an expressionless mask. At his presence, the previously talkative ladies fell silent. He remembered to sketch a bow but remained with his attention fixed on his pale wife. Edmund recalled his visit to her chambers last evening. She had lain with her back presented to him. Now in the light of day, he took in those details that had escaped him the previous evening. The cut at the corner of her mouth. The bruise on her neck. Then with a dawning, creeping horror all the darkest, ugliest possibilities slipped in of Phoebe on her back with some bounder above her, rutting between her thighs while she fought and cloyed for freedom. I was at my clubs. I was at my clubs while she was alone. He drew in a slow, calming breath, one heartbeat from madness. When that had no effect, he drew in another.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Miss Fairfax and Lady Gillian exchange looks and then wordlessly the two young ladies hurriedly took their leave.

  That sprung Phoebe back to movement. She jumped to her feet. “You do not have to go,” she called after them, her voice a high squeak. Edmund stepped aside allowing her two silent friends to slip from the room like white ruffled geese in matching steps until he and Phoebe were alone. He reached behind him and drew the door silently closed.

  “Who?” he asked quietly.

  She slid her gaze away from his and made a show of studying the tips of her slippers. “I don’t—”

  “Who?”

  Phoebe picked her head up. “Does it matter?” She lifted her shoulders in a little shrug. “It could have been any number of irate husbands who sought revenge on the man who took their wife as his lover.”

  His stomach churned with nausea. Bile climbed up his throat, until he thought he might be ill. “Is that what happened?” he hardly recognized that strangled, garbled tone as
belonging to him.

  Her hesitancy served as his confirmation. Edmund closed the distance between them in several long strides and hovered before her. In a world where he was decisive and moved with purpose, now he was at sea. So this was what it was like to be preyed upon.

  He stretched a hand out and brushed his fingertips over the mark on her neck. His heart pounded loudly in his ears, nearly deafening. When he trusted himself to speak he asked the question he didn’t really want an answer to. “Did he—?” Ah, God help him for a coward. One single utterance would shred what was left of his worthless soul.

  Phoebe fisted the fabric of her skirts. “No.” She gave a brusque shake of her head. “He did not.” Edmund slid his eyes closed and sent a prayer skywards to a God who apparently did exist. He opened them again just as his wife touched her fingertips to a heart pendant at her neck, an inexpensive bauble that gleamed bright. “The Marchioness of Waverly came upon us…him…and she clouted him over the head. The marquess saw to my carriage. And then I returned home.”

  How coolly emotionless she spoke and yet the faintest tremble to her lithe frame indicated the mark left by the monster who’d touched her. And Edmund had not been there. He stared at the crown of her dark tresses. He’d promised that she’d be afforded the protection of his name. Instead, he’d left her dependent on the timely arrival of strangers. Edmund had never hated himself more than he did in this moment. The Marquess of Waverly, brother to Lord Alex Edgerton, a man whom he’d sought to publicly humiliate for perceived injustices after Margaret’s betrayal, no less. For this, Edmund would eternally owe that family his fealty. What a humbling, shaming moment. “Who?” She paused and for a long moment he suspected she’d withhold that name, and it would forever haunt him knowing that a gentleman who moved about polite Society had dared kiss her mouth and marked her skin.

  “Lord Brewer.”

  “….I’ve had so many other men’s wives in my bed, surely you don’t expect me to remember yours…?”