Twice a Rake

by Catherine Gayle

  1 April, 1811

  Life as I have known it is now over. It was nice to know you. Please remember me kindly.

  ~From the new journal of Miss Aurora Hyatt

  “Today, my friend, is the first day of your future as a true gentleman.” Jonas stood before him as the picture of the London gentleman, with everything in precisely the proper place. Top hat, angled just so. Pantaloons, waistcoat, greatcoat, cravat. Check, check, check, check. Sheer elegance and perfection.

  Devil take him.

  Standing next to him, Quin felt like a buffoon. His breeches fit more snugly than he liked, his greatcoat hardly allowed him any free movement, the bloody cravat threatened to strangle him, and he’d be damned if he’d enjoy wearing a blasted beaver hat.

  Jonas had tried to convince him to cut his hair along with the shave, but there were some things a man just simply couldn’t allow.

  He attempted to stretch out his legs and arms, hoping to find a way to function in the fussy attire. “Can we get on with it already? I don’t know how long I can pass as a dandy.” At least not without swooning like a woman.

  Jonas smirked. “Not very long.” He gave Quin’s appearance a final examination. “You really ought to have worn one of my coats. Something with some color. Something less funereal, sans the look of…well, death.”

  Color. That would be the day. “I feel like death. Death agrees with me. Besides, we’re hunting for a bride. Isn’t that much the same as attending my own funeral?”

  “How do you intend to catch a bride if you scare all the young ladies away? You look as dour as a gravedigger preparing to bury his father.”

  “Excellent. That is just the look I had hoped for when I dressed this morning.” Quin failed to understand why his appearance was of such import.

  Jonas heaved a sigh. “Well, I suppose there is nothing to be done for it. Shall we away?” He headed for his stables without waiting for Quin’s reply.

  It was about time, too. While Quin wanted nothing less than to find a bride, the matter was no longer up for debate. And clearly his tactics had been dismal failures, at best. He might as well try what Jonas suggested, even if he thought it a ridiculous notion.

  Honestly. Riding through Hyde Park and hoping to meet young ladies there? Impressing them with his posture on a horse? Making small talk? Making himself affable to their chaperones and escorts? None of this sounded like a good method of convincing a young lady that she was madly in love with him and needed to marry him at once. If anything, it sounded like a good method of landing himself in Bedlam.

  But what did he have to lose? Only his sanity (which some might claim he’d already lost) and an afternoon.

  He followed along behind Jonas, mounted his horse, and they were off. They reached the park well before the fashionable hour, but still several groups of walkers strolled along the Serpentine, and Rotten Row was filling with people on horseback and in a variety of carriages. As one group came upon another, they would all bow and curtsy and stop for conversation.

  Bloody hell. He’d never felt so confined, so trapped, whilst out of doors. Perhaps he would toss himself into the Thames before they were through. Or maybe he’d toss Jonas, instead.

  Yes, now that he thought about it for a moment, most assuredly Jonas.

  “Ah, wonderful,” Jonas said. “Lord and Lady Tyndall and their daughter, Miss Tyndall, are headed our way on foot. Perhaps we should start with them.”

  “Perhaps we should gouge out our eyes with dull, rusty daggers,” Quin responded. “That might be equally as pleasant.”

  “Coward.”

  “Degenerate.”

  But Jonas afforded him no opportunity to hesitate. He lifted his hand and called, “Lord and Lady Tyndall. Lovely day today, is it not? And how delightful to see you out as well, Miss Tyndall.”

  The baronet rode to the family’s side before Quin had a chance to stop him, leaving Quin with no choice but to join them or look the part of the cad. Which, of course, he was, but he was supposed to be mending his ways.

  He had half a heart to toss his grandfather into the Thames now, instead of anyone else. Then he could just inherit and be done with it. Devilish old codger.

  So he rode over to the oh-so-delightful Tyndall family and joined his friend.

  “Have you all had the pleasure of meeting my good friend, Lord Quinton? He has finally come in from the country to give life in Town a try.”

  Tyndall seemed interested and started to speak, but his wife shook her head furiously at him with a forbidding glare in her eyes. “I believe,” she said, “we must be on our way, Sir Jonas.” She tugged on the arms of both her husband and her daughter, whispering loudly to her husband, “Lord Quinton is the one. We must not associate ourselves with him.” They walked at a much faster pace than their previous stroll and were out of earshot within moments.

  “I told you this was a bad idea.” Quin watched the trio move along the Serpentine and stop at another group of walkers. They talked for a moment and then turned and pointed in his direction. The second group changed directions and walked away with the Tyndalls. “Are you ready to give up on this bag of moonshine yet? We need another plan. This will never work.”

  Jonas spurred his horse forward. “Not yet. We’ve only talked to one family! There are easily a dozen more groups we can try. If we stay long enough, the park will be full of fashionable opportunities.”

  “But if they won’t even let me speak…”

  “We’ll worry about that when we come to it.” Jonas had spotted another group, this one with two gentlemen and two ladies who were heading for them.

  “We’ve already come to it!” Blast. He should turn around. He ought to go back to Jonas’s bachelor lodgings and prepare himself for that evening, and then return to his original plan. It would work. Eventually. Somehow, he would stumble upon a young lady desperate enough to be married that she would marry even him. She had to exist. He merely had to find her. Weren’t balls the most likely place for a young lady to be in search of a husband?

  The sound of galloping horses and out of control carriages barreled down on him from behind. Quin had only just leapt to the side and out of the way before they were upon him: two curricles, each carrying a gentleman and a lady, racing along the path, headed for Rotten Row. He had to stop himself from cursing them for their audacity.

  One of the ladies screamed and grabbed hold of her bonnet. A book flew out of the curricle and landed only a few feet from him. Up ahead, parasols and bonnets and top hats flew out behind the two vehicles, landing in a decidedly haphazard fashion as they went.

  Quin dismounted to collect the book so he could return it to its owner, even if she did pose a dangerous risk to society by racing at full speed through a park without regard for the other people who might happen to be there. Out of curiosity, he flipped through the pages to see what she’d been reading. But this was no printed book—it was her journal.

  Before I could react in any way, Lord Quinton’s lips fell upon mine, soft and supple and wantonly delectable.

  Damnation!

  One of those chits had been writing about him. And not writing about how fiendish he was, or what a cur he was, or any other reasonable thing for a young lady of good ton to believe of him. But she was writing about kissing him. And liking it. Which was no surprise to him, but seemed it might be a bit of a surprise to her.

  He was fairly certain he hadn’t kissed either of them. Not yet, at least.

  But he’d be damned if that remained the way of things.

  “What have you there, Quin?” Jonas asked as he returned. “A book? I never took you for the reading sort.”

  “I’m not. Or I wasn’t until now.” His life was on the verge of a momentous change. He could feel it. Granted, part of that change included marriage, but that couldn’t be avoided any longer.

  At least that marriage would be to someone who might keep him interested. Because how could a woman who wrote such a thing about him be uninterest
ing?

  He felt invigorated. Alive.

  Quin had just discovered his bride. Now he simply had to discover her identity and convince her to marry him.

  That couldn’t be too difficult.

  ~ * ~

  “Aurora. There couldn’t possibly be very many Auroras to choose from.” Quin sat at a table at White’s with Jonas, reading through the journal he’d found at Hyde Park.

  “I know of only one in the beau monde. But keep your voice down. You’ll ruin her before you even meet her, if anyone hears.”

  Only one. Excellent. “She’s the one.”

  “What the hell are you after? How can you know she’s the one? You’ve never met her. You know nothing about her.” Jonas threw up his hands in disgust. “All you have is this…this…book that she’s written.”

  “Precisely. I have this book in which she’s written a cornucopia of brazen and lascivious ideas. About me. And her. About us. That means she already thinks there is an us.” He couldn’t have dreamed up an idea more perfect if he’d tried. “Listen to this: ‘Lord Quinton pulled me into another embrace and I felt my body come alive. The energy between us thrummed with an electricity I never knew existed. I looked up into his eyes, beckoning, begging. Before I could speak the words to ask, his lips crushed down against my own again, far more insistently than before.’ She’s practically begging me to come and ravish her. How can I deny the minx the joys of my infinite skill in that area?” He turned to another page. “And here! Here she writes of us marrying.”

  Jonas glared at him across the table and placed a finger over his lips. “Be quiet. You can’t know that it is really about you. Be realistic, Quin. She could just have an overactive imagination.”

  Blasphemy. “What other Lord Quinton would it be about, hmm? What other Lord Quinton is there with long, sun-kissed hair, who is clad in all black and is dashing and daring enough to kiss a young lady so boldly?” He waited a half a second for Jonas to answer him, but no more. “None! Besides, look through here at these other stories. Granted, none are nearly so exciting as the one she wrote about me, but they certainly are here.” He flipped through the pages until he found the one he was looking for. “Like this one, about Lord Vickery. Would her description of him be accurate? ‘More round than tall, more on his head than in it, more bleak than London fog in November.’”

  “Well, yes, but”

  “But nothing!” Quin flipped back a few more pages. “Try this one, about Lord Padbury. ‘So portly he must have filled his pockets with cakes and tarts, because no man could possibly take up such a great amount of space without such assistance.’ How accurate is that assessment?” As his certainty about this Aurora grew stronger, so did his voice.

  Jonas shook his head in defeat. “Entirely accurate.”

  “Then how, if these other gentlemen are portrayed as they actually are in real life, might this Lord Quinton be anyone but me?” He raised an eyebrow at his friend. “Precisely. He cannot. So, who is this Aurora? Tell me what you know.”

  “What I know is on the side of meager. Her name is Aurora Hyatt. Her father is Viscount Hyatt. She’s been on the marriage mart for a number of Seasons. I seem to recall a wedding announcement at one point years ago, but I believe her betrothed came to an untimely end before such an occurrence came to pass.”

  A prior engagement he could handle. And if she had been on the hunt for a replacement for a dead fiancé for years, surely she was close to the point of desperation. Precisely what he needed. “So no scandals? Nothing Rotheby could use to disqualify her as a potential match?”

  “I believe there might have been some minor controversy over her mother. She was not born of the ton, if memory serves—but from somewhere exotic.”

  Exotic? That sounded promising.

  “But her father has always had an upstanding reputation. Rotheby could use the very journal you’re holding in your hands, though. That bit of bound parchment is enough scandal to keep the gossips in ceaseless supply for months.”

  Quin waved a hand through the air. “He can’t use it if he doesn’t know of its existence. Surely, no one knows of it but the two of us and Miss Hyatt. I can’t imagine any young lady in hopes of finding a reputable match would reveal its contents to anyone else, in fear of the damage it would cause to her reputation. She can’t announce it as missing without facing the possibility of its discovery.”

  “Someone else will know if you don’t keep your voice down.”

  Blast. He just couldn’t quite seem to contain his enthusiasm. The more he thought about it, the more certain he was. This Aurora Hyatt was exactly the miss he needed to convince to marry him. She already thought herself in love with him, the silly minx. And to top it all off, she was a scandal waiting to happen.

  A scandal waiting for him to play his part and rescue her from her own folly.

  As long as he did just that, Rotheby would be entirely unable to find any fault with her—a young society miss, daughter of a viscount, clearly (based upon her writing) well educated, if just a mite on the opinionated side of things. Quin would have to work on that last part. But there should be plenty of time for her to learn her new position.

  Now he just needed to meet her. “Find out what ball she’ll attend tonight, Jonas. It’s time I meet my bride.”

  Chapter Four

  1 April, 1811

  I am no longer entirely certain I am still alive. There appears to be some feeling in my extremities, yet my heart has gone utterly and completely numb. I cannot believe I was so foolish as to lose my journal. I can only hope that Rebecca is right and it is floating away down the Serpentine even as we speak. At least then, even if someone were to find it, the ink would have smeared. Then no one would be able to read the things I’ve written. No one would know that I called Lord Endicott a bloated old toad with the warts to prove it. Except Endicott himself, of course. But he is far too gentlemanly to ever reveal such a thing. If only I were too ladylike to have refrained from voicing such a thing.

  ~From the journal of Miss Aurora Hyatt

  Seething was hardly a forceful enough term to describe Lord Griffin Seabrook’s mood as he left White’s that afternoon. Furious might be more apt. Or murderous—aye, that term held particular appeal.

  Time Quinton meet his bride, indeed.

  Griffin had heard the word spreading through the ton of Lord Quinton’s arrival in Town, almost always accompanied by descriptions of his vulgar attire, his indiscreet flirtations, his lewd behaviors. He’d done his best to protect Phoebe from the news, lest she again suffer shame and degradation.

  It was enough to make a gentleman either violently ill or violently enraged.

  Particularly when the gentleman in question happened to be an older brother of Quinton’s true bride.

  The bastard had a lot of nerve.

  He even had the audacity to speak of his plan, of his secret, sitting out in the open in the middle of White’s. And to make matters worse, he hadn’t bothered to keep his voice down, despite repeated reminders from his companion. Griffin half expected the bastard to place a bet in the books on how soon he could convince Miss Hyatt to capitulate and agree to his dastardly plot.

  He had to wonder about the why of it all. Not why this pitiable Miss Hyatt seemed so preoccupied with the monster, per se, seeing as how Griffin’s own sister had once fallen into Quinton’s trap. But more the why on Quinton’s end: why the need to marry, and particularly, why the need to do so in such a rush?

  But one thing was certain—he would not suffer Quinton’s success. He would not sit idly by and watch the lecher ruin another young lady. He would not bite his tongue and let the plans in motion play out.

  He turned down Piccadilly from St. James Street, thankful for the time and space to stretch his legs while he ruminated over his options.

  Griffin could take the matter straight to his father, the Marquess of Laughton, and let him deal with it. But Father already had enough to deal with at the moment, between the departur
e of his longstanding mistress and the impending arrival of yet another by-blow.

  He could confront Quinton about his treachery. Call him out. Settle the score once and for all—something he’d been itching to do now for years, but had been unable to do with the cowardly scoundrel on the Continent—but there remained the slight problem of the illegality of dueling, and the rather more pronounced problem of Quinton’s esteemed marksmanship.

  Griffin could take the more backhanded approach of enlightening the gossips as to Miss Hyatt’s journal and its contents. But in so doing, he would be lowering himself to Quinton’s standards—permanently and irrevocably ruining a young lady. Such an approach might also have unintended consequences, such as merely rushing the two into marriage. No, that method was clearly out. None of those options seemed to fulfill Griffin’s purpose.