A Notorious Ruin

by Carolyn Jewel

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said.

  “I expected Captain Niall to be joining me. Not you.”

  “I’m sure he’s on his way.” And yes, she was smiling, and he fancied her smile was rather what it would be like if Aphrodite came to life and deigned to notice a mortal man. Men lost their souls over a smile like that. He was not immune.

  “No doubt.”

  “Yes.” The word was clipped, and—could it be so? Her smile turned brittle, on the brink of shattering, and that was alarming to see her crumbling. She pressed her mouth closed as if she did not trust herself to speak. But then she did, and the words flowed. Empty of meaning. Stripped, even, of any fluctuation in emotion. She swallowed hard. Just the once. “Only a moment’s delay, my lord.”

  “I am content to wait.”

  “Yes.” Her smile was nothing but treacle. “You must be content to wait.”

  He watched with alarm as she blinked several times and drew a long slow breath. The silence went on and on, with her saying nothing. Not about the weather nor any inquiry about his health, nor a recitation of her most excellent breakfast, wasn’t Sinclair’s cook a genius in the kitchen? Which whoever held the position most assuredly was not.

  Thrale coughed once. If this were her sister, Anne, they’d be discussing politics. If it were Mary, Lady Aldreth, he’d be having an insightful exchange about estate management. With the youngest, Miss Sinclair, God only knew. Something outrageous. He had no notion what to do with Mrs. Wilcott. They had nothing in common. “Your sister is well, I hope?”

  At last, her expression smoothed out, and thank God, all was as it should be. “Very well, thank you. I shall tell her you’ve asked after her.”

  But no. All was not as it should be. The woman looked as if she were drowning on the inside. He told himself that was nonsense, that impression of his. Mrs. Wilcott had no great passion in her.

  “And you, ma’am?”

  She lifted her chin. “Quite well, my lord.”

  Silence fell again.

  He had no friendship with her as he did with her sisters. No claim to her affection, nor had she any claim to his. And so he stood by his chair, mute until the quiet reminded him of the reason one gave meaningless responses to meaningless statements. Such words prevented awkwardness like this. And so, he could not fault her for empty conversation, though why, if she had lost her capacity for inanity, she did not take her leave was beyond him. Could the blasted woman not move away from the door?

  Against every inclination, he said, “Is aught well?”

  She let out a breath and stared at the floor. Head bowed. And then, God save him, she made a motion suggestive of a surreptitious attempt to wipe away a tear. He considered allowing them to march their separate, solitary paths. But not even he was proof against tears she did not wish him to see. Her fingers swiped her cheeks again. No. Not this. Not pity. He refused.

  Her mouth quivered, and her eyes were too bright. “Yes of course.” She laughed, and the sound was a perfect imitation of nothing. “I am quite well. Thank you so much for asking.”

  She examined the skirt of her gown, smoothing the drape, realigning the ends of the ribbon tied beneath her bosom. His way out of this damnable situation was clear. Bow and take his leave. She’d have to stop blocking his way to the door, then. As simple as that. Doubtless she’d be as glad to be quit of him as he would be to leave her here.

  Except, one single drop glittered on the sooty black of her lower lashes. He watched, helpless, as it slid down her cheek. She brushed it away as she had the others. Too late for either of them to deny it.

  He hadn’t a reputation as a man of warmth, but he was not cold enough to leave a woman in so unhappy a state. She was a lady, and, more, the relative of men he considered friends. Besides, Anne would never forgive him if he left this room knowing her sister’s despair and having done nothing for her. One had a duty to one’s friends.

  “Mrs. Wilcott.”

  She spread her arms. “My lord. As you can see, I am well.”

  “Yes.” He filled that word with full doubt.

  She blinked, and more tears balanced on her lower lashes. Save him. Please God, save him from the lurch in his chest at the sight of this woman valiantly battling for control.

  “Shall I call someone? Your sister? Your maid, perhaps?”

  “No.” And now, she was fascinated by the floor. Her refusal to acknowledge her tears struck like an arrow to his heart. He did not want to feel sorry for her, to have his emotions knot up like this.

  “Ma’am.”

  She turned her head, and the world tilted on its axis. Awareness shone from her eyes. Intelligence blazed there, fierce. So fierce. A woman he could have fallen madly in love with stared at him, and there were still tears. More of those bloody damned tears.

  “You need not pretend,” she said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I know,” she said with devastating clarity in her eyes and in her voice, in the very way she stood, “that you do not like me.”

  He could deny it, but she’d know it for a lie. This woman would know. He gave her a different truth instead. “I do not like the woman you pretend to be.”

  “There is but one of me.”

  Again, a crossroads loomed before him. Agree and go on as they had been. Or not. “That is not so.”

  “Do not be cast down, my lord. I am in perfect charity with your dislike of me. I consider it a compliment to your good taste.”

  He walked close enough to hand her his handkerchief, but she refused to take it. Stubborn. Where, for all that was Holy, was the woman who would have accepted a gentleman’s handkerchief as if it were a prize due her? “For now, while you are not that other woman, tell me what is the matter.”

  She shook her head.

  Thrale took a step closer and touched her cheek. He’d taken off his gloves to read because he’d expected Niall not her. His bare fingers brushed her skin, so soft. It was true. He could fuck a stupid woman as easily as any other sort. If she, a beautiful young widow, was agreeable to that, why not? “What’s happened to bring you to this state?”

  She did not retreat from him. She gazed at him, and he possessed no defense against this woman. None at all. He wiped another tear from her cheek, aware he was in a great deal of danger.

  “My lord. I’ve no idea—”

  “Don’t.” He moved closer. “Don’t pretend to be a fool if you are not one. I take offense.” He stayed close to her when he ought not. Because he did not want to lose this astonishing sense he was alive and on the verge of changing his life. She had chosen to show him the woman she really was because he was not like other men. Not easily fooled. Not so dazzled by her beauty that he did not care about anything else.

  He brushed his fingers under her chin and was devastated by her distress, by her continued quiet regard of him. Most of all, however, was his awareness that she wasn’t doing anything to make him think she did not want to explore the heat boiling between them. And that was a shocking thing. Arousing.

  She tipped her chin toward him, and her smile changed. “You don’t want this.”

  “Don’t want what?” He leaned closer, their torsos mere inches apart. “For you to stop pretending? I want that more than you can imagine.”

  “You don’t want to kiss a woman like me.”

  The knowledge behind those words stirred his every carnal instinct. He shifted his hand on the door until it was by her ear. “Is that a dare?”

  “It is a statement of fact.”

  He brushed the backs of his fingers across her cheek. “You don’t want to challenge me.”

  “Why not?”

  He laughed, a low sound. Ironic. “Some of the rumors about me are true.”

  She tilted her head, and if she’d put her hand on his prick, he would not have been more titillated. “And yet I trust you.”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  “I know what you did for Anne last season. I know what you endu
red.” She rested the back of her head against the door.

  “What has that to do with anything?”

  “Everything. Shall I prove it to you?”

  He laughed, entertained. Intrigued. “Please do.”

  She gave him a slow, heated smile that showed him a woman who had been in a man’s arms and enjoyed herself whilst there. “My Lord Thrale.” Her eyes went wide. “My Adonis Lord Thrale. Do whatever you like right now. Anything. I won’t say no. I won’t object. Do the very worst you can imagine, and I’ll never tell a soul.”

  “They’ll hear you scream.”

  Her mouth twitched, but he did not mistake that for scorn. “I shan’t make a sound.”

  He kept the distance between them close. He knew damn well when he was being played, but whatever she’d heard about him, she seemed to have guessed which parts were true, and that aroused him, that she might know that about him. “If I leave marks on this pretty skin of yours, what then?”

  She paled, but that was all. “Obviously, you ought not leave them where anyone but my maid will see. She is the very soul of discretion, I promise you.”

  “Now?”

  “Only if you do as you like right now. This very moment.” She leaned closer; pure seduction in her voice and smile. “Whatever you like.”

  He imagined what he might do. He imagined a great deal that he should not. He imagined her soft skin and the perfection of her face and figure, and he imagined he was the sort of swine who would take a woman like her up against the wall, even if the encounter would have been the hard, fast, fuck he liked.

  He pushed away.

  “Precisely,” she said.

  He narrowed his eyes at her, affronted by her victorious tone. “What is that to mean?”

  She did not flinch at his sharp retort. “Whatever else is true about you, so is this. No matter what anyone says, I am safe with you.”

  “What if I’d gone ahead?”

  “Why, I would have let you.”

  His chest tightened. “Foolish woman.”

  “You may think so. I believe the evidence suggests otherwise.”

  A door banged somewhere in the same corridor as the parlor they were in, startling them both.

  A man bellowed from the corridor. Thomas Sinclair. “Where have you gone, Lucy?”

  There were more footsteps.

  The man shouted again. “I’d not done talking to you, you know.”

  Their gazes collided. She was cool and remote, and it was as if he stood before Cinderella at the stroke of midnight, because she changed back. She changed from the fascinating, aware, beguiling creature who could tell him with full irony she did not despair of his dislike of her, back to the empty-headed creature of the ballroom.

  “No,” he said. “No.”

  Sinclair continued. “Five hundred will see me through the month. Ask him. Give him that pretty smile, and he’ll open his wallet for you.” The man called out in that over-loud voice so common to drunks. He was coming closer, and then he was outside the door. The hardware rattled when he tried to open it, which he could not because Thrale pressed his hand to the door above Mrs. Wilcott’s shoulder and leaned in.

  “Your father?” Thrale said in a low voice, hand still on the door. Cynssyr said very little about his father-in-law, but he’d let slip a few words that made him think this incident was not as rare as it ought to be. “Your father is asking you to pay his debts?”

  Color rose in her cheeks.

  Her father, for that was her father, pounded on the door. “Is that where you’ve got to? Open the door. I’m sorry. Sorry, my girl, but there’s nothing else for it. Nothing else to be done. Ask for six hundred, they’ll give it you if you smile the way you do. Six hundred, and you’ll have enough left to buy yourself a nice gown or two.”

  Thrale pushed hard on the door. He wanted to open it and tell the man to go to hell.

  “It’s your fault. Your fault.” Sinclair said from the other side. He rattled the door. “You steered me wrong, and now you must make it right.”

  “Papa.” That was Miss Sinclair’s voice, a shade too hearty, a touch pleading, but direct. Nothing like her sister. She was not close, but not so far away, either. “Here, Papa. Allow me—”

  The conversation outside devolved into an unintelligible exchange as Miss Sinclair led her father away. Mrs. Wilcott pushed his hand off the door, and he allowed himself to be moved aside, but no more than that.

  “What the devil did he mean?”

  Hand on the door, she bowed her head. Defeated? Aware he had seen and understood too much? “Nothing.”

  “Do not lie to me.” He had no right to make that demand. They were not lovers. Nor friends. They were scarcely acquaintances.

  She walked out, as was her right.

  CHAPTER 6

  The shop door closed with a clap when Lucy swept into the bookshop. She breathed in the papery scent and was transported. The smell was almost as wonderful as the sight of floor-to-ceiling shelves of books. Her maid took a seat on a bench by the door and settled in for the customary wait.

  “Mrs. Wilcott.” The shopkeeper positioned a book on a sheet of the red paper he used to wrap purchases and leaned to one side to see around his customer. “Good day to you, ma’am.”

  “Likewise.” She perused the shelves and wished she had more ready money, for here was a volume of poetry she would have bought under better circumstances. She wandered to the counter with an array of the latest fashion prints. Several issues of various ladies magazines took up the counter, most unbound and full of instructions on how a woman might perfect her appearance and properly comport herself in society. As a girl, she’d read every issue of Le Beau Monde and La Belle Assemblée from cover to cover, breathlessly absorbing the advice.

  While she flipped through the pages, the shop door opened to admit Johnson. He carried himself with a familiar physical confidence. Even at the height of his fighting career, he’d never been more than nine stone, so he’d never faced any of the heavyweights in battle.

  She moved away from the fashion prints to examine a book of maps, one of several on another counter. There was a new edition of The Gazeteer that she’d have loved to take home with her. Eventually, Johnson joined her at the counter, engrossed, one might think, in his perusal of the books there.

  “Owen and Neimiah?” she said in a low voice.

  “Six to one.”

  “Neimiah, five pounds to win.” She had to wager more conservatively than she liked, but she’d take those odds. Neimiah was a small fighter, but fierce, with exemplary technique backed by strong legs. Owen relied too much on his size. Five pounds, not seven or eight or even ten because of her outlays in advance of Lord Thrale and Captain Niall’s arrival at The Cooperage. No more the stark fact that the hundred pounds she’d given her father had set back her hopes for a removal.

  Johnson made a tick in his notebook. “To win, then. If you’re sure.”

  “I am. I understand Eliss and Kirkland battle Wednesday next.”

  “Aye. Location to be arranged.” He gave the current odds, and she made the wager she’d derived from studying her information on the two prizefighters and their respective battles. So long as she did that, over time, she stayed in profits. Her strategy of caution was even more crucial now that they had the expense of a noble visitor, and her with a hundred pounds to recoup.

  “Dutch Jim against Isaacs.”

  “Pass.”

  There was another difficulty arising out of having visitors who could be counted on to attend the local battles. It would be more difficult for her to see the fighters and assess their fitness and talents. Her goal, her only goal in her wagers, was to have a source of funds about which her father knew nothing. Money she’d been laying by since her return to Bartley Green.

  She had, as it happened, plentiful sources of information about fighters and their battles, historical and recent. Her father subscribed to several Sporting magazines in which the results of battles were
described in florid detail. She had spent six weeks updating and expanding her painstaking compilation of information about battles and outcomes, noting size and weight and the sorts of hits recorded, the number of rounds, and from those records there had emerged a set of general predictions that might be made about certain fighters.

  A betting man, she’d been told, could use her figures to turn a profit. The money she won she used to pay the most pressing of the household expenses. She set aside as much as possible for the cottage where she would one day live.

  She and Johnson ran through the battles set for the coming days, many of them exhibitions at the Academy—no prizes publicly offered so as not to run afoul of the law. Purses would be held separately and informally. Competitions and bouts were arranged in secrecy and on short notice so the authorities would not discover the engagements until too late to intervene. Many a time, the constabulary looked the other way on account of being in attendance themselves or being unwilling to arrest men of rank. Here in Bartley Green they’d long turned a blind eye to the goings-on. Nevertheless, one never knew.

  There were battles in neighboring towns she could wager on, but she preferred to place money on engagements where she knew who was likely to officiate. Bottlemen, seconds, and timekeepers had been known to collude to affect the outcome, and worse, as with that infamous match with Dutch Jim, there had been allegations of collusion between fighters.

  Lucy had no illusion the noble sport was entirely pure. She’d seen and heard too much to think anything so naive as that. For all the appreciation by admirers of a battle well fought, followers of the great sport sometimes conspired. Wherever men crowded to watch a battle, there were pickpockets, thieves, and cheats eager to send the flow of money to the illegitimate. Such was ever the case where there was money to be had.

  She gave Johnson banknotes to hold for her. Having lived too many years with a father who bet with funds he did not have, she had always paid over her bets. There would be wagers aplenty at the scene, with monies held by third parties, Johnson or one of his sons, if they were local fights.