A Notorious Ruin

by Carolyn Jewel

  “My father? No.” Her fingers smoothed along the dome of the dog’s head, and she focused all her attention there. In these past days he’d learned to watch for minute changes of expression that gave away her true state. What he saw now was the kind of sorrow from which one never recovered. “My husband.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Her husband. Thrale did not know if he ought to follow that fascinating trail or leave it be. The subject of Mrs. Wilcott’s husband was nothing short of mystery, and he was curious beyond what was proper. “He was a Sporting man?”

  “After a fashion, yes.”

  While he was not yet willing to conclude he was forgiven, his measure of hope grew. Any confidence from her about her late husband must be taken as a sign that she did not despise him. “This explains much. Mr. Wilcott was a student of the art, I take it.”

  She smiled, and that distracted him. “There was very little on the subject he did not know. I could not help but learn a thing or two myself.”

  How odd that pugilism would prove a common ground for them. “I ought to have asked the bookseller if he has Wilcott’s great treatise on the subject. You might like a copy for yourself. Mine has pride of place in my library, though if your husband was a student as you say then he would have had a copy as well.”

  “He did.”

  Now there was a coincidence, that Mrs. Wilcott’s husband shared a surname with the writer of the finest treatise ever written on the subject of pugilism. Aside from that concordance, there was no reason for her to care about a St. Giles-born fighter and scrivener, but he found himself unable to let the subject drop. “Perhaps you know the author was a prizefighter himself. By the name of Jack Wilcott.”

  Her fingers paused in their stroking of Roger’s head, then resumed. “Yes.”

  The name Wilcott wasn’t uncommon, but if her husband had been a Sporting man and the treatise had been in her home as well, she would have remarked the surname she and her husband shared with Jack Wilcott.

  “Six foot six,” he said. He came closer, but not, he hoped, so close as to offend. “Arms like trees. Never a better student of the science. They called him—”

  “Devil.” Her frock was white sprigged with lilac. Nothing spectacular. This was a gown to wear when one did not expect admiration. The woman made it spectacular.

  As a young wife, had she felt it was her duty to read Wilcott’s treatise because her husband held the subject in esteem? That was not the action of a woman whose marriage had been unhappy. “You are familiar with the work, then.”

  “I am.” This she said with a smile, not a grimace. He could not conclude she had read the book unwillingly.

  “Devil because as a boy he sold matches near London Bridge.”

  “He didn’t, though.” She brushed her skirts with both hands. “That was the story he told, but he was the tenth of eleven children from a farm in Cornwall. He made up the story about the matches in the hope he’d be called Lucifer.”

  “Did he now?” He crossed his arms over his chest. Plainly, she had read parts of Wilcott’s treatise, but not all, since the story of the author’s life in St. Giles was scattered throughout the work. Had she read to the end, she’d know the entire story of Jack Wilcott’s life.

  A smile flashed at the edges of her mouth, not the least coy. The tedium of their previous conversations was gone with this discovery of a shared interest. “He was never anywhere near London Bridge until long after he ran away to fight. I suspect the nearest he got to London Bridge was the Five Courts.”

  Five Courts being London’s premier location for exhibitions and battles of pugilism. Wilcott had fought there many times. As to Wilcott’s birthplace, that was definitively documented and recorded in writings too numerous to name. There could be no dispute.

  “The history of his career is well known, ma’am. Jack, The Devil, Wilcott grew up in St. Giles where he sold matches and brawled on the streets until the day someone told him he ought to fight for prize money.”

  “Yes.” She walked off the rock, the dog at her heels. Thrale moved forward to help her to firmer ground. Her fingers tightened around his hand. He was too aware of the state of his undress, she, however, seemed not the least concerned. When she reached the path, she released his hand. “Thank you, my lord.”

  “Ma’am.”

  She glanced at the sky. He braced himself for a remark on the promise of rain. “He did not write the entire truth.” Her attention returned to him, and he was caught unprepared by her sharp focus. “He wasn’t less of a fighter because he came from Cornwall and not St. Giles.”

  “No.” Was he charmed by her provably wrong beliefs? He thought he might be. She looked at him full on, and his breath caught. The woman before him was not the woman he’d known in London. This woman was formidable.

  “Anyone who knew him heard the truth in his voice.” She took a few steps away from the bank. “He was no more from St. Giles than you or I.”

  “Every word written of his life prior to his taking up the art says otherwise. Including his own, ma’am.” They stood close since she’d not moved far from him after he’d escorted her to the path. He ought to put some distance between them.

  She waved a hand in her familiar, lazy, manner, as if it cost her everything to move even that much. And yet, there was nothing of that enervation in her words. “The story suited him.”

  Very well then. “Why?”

  “At the time he published, he had business affairs he wished to succeed.”

  He considered that for several seconds; her certainty about facts no one could know without having known Wilcott himself. The unusual, for her, assurance.

  No. Surely, not. He wracked his brain for any information he might have heard about her late husband and came up with nothing. Even her sister the duchess had said next to nothing about Mrs. Wilcott’s marriage, other than to imply it had not been a happy one. It was inconceivable that this woman, a lady born and raised, had been married to a prizefighter.

  “For all that he was lowborn, there was never anyone more aware of the importance of reputation than him.” She smiled, and he could not get his bearings. Impossible. “He used to say he lied like the Devil Himself to avoid being called The Farmer.”

  “Your husband was Jack Wilcott.” The words came out hard. Incredulous. An accusation.

  Her expression stayed smooth, and he saw it now for a hard-won defense. “He was.”

  “Jack Wilcott. The Devil?” Wilcott had been a great battler. A warrior. Among the best. Strong, fast, determined he would not lose no matter whom he faced. It was said upwards of a million pounds sterling had been wagered on his last battle.

  “Yes.”

  Over the course of his career, Jack Wilcott had turned his winnings into a fortune. He’d a knack for investment, it seemed. In his fighting prime, he opened his Atheneum and penned the first of various writings on pugilism, its history, its notable battlers, and then the work that had made his name golden to lovers of the art. A combination of all his writings into a comprehensive history and a guide to techniques for the modern fighter.

  During that great match, it had looked as though The Devil would lose for the first time in his career, he’d taken so many terrible blows. In the fiftieth round, he’d struck his opponent a nobber that dropped the man to his knees, and then another to his face, and that was the end. A convincing victory.

  Afterward, there were rumors the timekeeper had been bribed and that one of the referees had been paid to throw the match to Wilcott’s opponent, or that The Devil Himself had been paid to lose. Whatever the truth, three days later, Jack, the Devil, Wilcott was dead of the injuries he’d suffered during the battle. His name was celebrated among the Sporting set and revered among those who knew their fighting history. He made a fortune with his fists and hands, but one thing Jack Wilcott had never been, and could never have been, was a gentleman.

  “Jack Wilcott. The owner of the Atheneum Sporting Arena and the author of Wilcott’s Gu
ide?”

  “The very same.” She replied without inflection, and yet there was something there in those words, some note of ironic comment.

  He cast back in his memory for details about her marriage and came up blank. He was stunned. Horrified. Repelled. This delicate woman, a lady born, had married a prizefighter? No wonder her family never talked about a marriage so far beneath her. No wonder Arthur Marsey had behaved as he had when he saw Jack Wilcott’s widow at the Bartley Green assembly.

  Had she eloped? She must have. The scandal must have been unspeakable.

  “There are newer books now,” she said. “It’s only men who are mad about the science who know his name.”

  His thoughts spun in his head. Devil Wilcott had married a lady and taken her to his bed? “I saw him fight once.”

  Her face lit up. “Did you?”

  That smile. Pure joy. Did she have no understanding of her ruin? Wilcott had been his age, or a very few years younger. Eight or ten years older than she. “Near Blackfern. He was a young man at the time. Just starting out.”

  “That must have been his battle against Bill Ramsey.”

  “Yes.”

  She plucked a leaf from a willow tree and folded it over and over until it could be folded no more. “Devil won that thirty seconds into the fifteenth. A ribber, a facer, and then a nobber, very fast, and Ramsey went down.”

  “How is it I never heard your husband was that Jack Wilcott?” The question burst from him, inappropriate. Incapable of response. Of course, she would not speak of it. One simply did not.

  She shrugged. “We Sinclairs have agreed silence is the wisest course.”

  “How did you meet?” Appalled that he’d given voice to his curiosity, he lifted a hand, palm out. “Your pardon again, that was unforgivably rude.”

  “He came to Bartley Green when Johnson opened the Academy. For the first exhibitions. He and Papa struck up an acquaintance, as sporting men will do.”

  “Ah.” Her dog ambled to him and pressed against his leg. He crouched down and rubbed his ears. He could not imagine Thomas Sinclair inviting a prizefighter to his home nor introducing a lowborn man to his daughter. What sort of girl had she been to have met and run away with Devil Wilcott? He kept his gaze on the dog. Had he not heard from someone that Mrs. Wilcott’s husband had paid her father’s not inconsiderable debts? Had not the duchess implied that her sister had married to save the family from a notorious ruin?

  Her pleasant smile never changed, and he was both chilled and impressed to see her so adept at disguising her feelings. “We were married soon after.”

  “I see.”

  “Roger was his dog.” That was affection in her words. She adored the animal, that was plain to anyone with eyes. “Devil took great pleasure in owning a dog like him. They were both mongrels, he said.”

  Thrale watched her walk away from the river and failed, again, to match the woman he thought she was—vain and scatterbrained—with this woman. A few feet from him, she turned, and their gazes met. His heart twisted again. What was he to do with the knowledge that she’d been married to a prizefighter? That she had kept her late husband’s dog? That she maintained an acquaintance with her husband’s associates?

  “You’ll find the gentlemen who train with Johnson have excellent technique. He’d not accept anything less of them, but Mr. Glynn is the best of them.”

  “Thank you for the information.”

  She laughed, and his breath caught. “You cannot imagine what facts are stuck here in my head. I am as Flash a woman as any man.”

  “I cannot doubt you.” Jack Wilcott. Good God.

  She curtsied, still with that devastating, empty smile. He could understand any man falling in love with her; young, old, or infirm. But what made a young lady of good family fall in love with the likes of Devil Wilcott? “Last month, Dutch Jim was seen to be drunk the morning of his battle with Nate Booker—”

  “You saw that battle?”

  She shook her head. “Johnson told me. Dutch Jim’s state that morning was a sham to sway the odds. His second, the timekeeper, and several compatriots between them, lay down five hundred pounds and came away a winner at ten-to-one odds.”

  Astonishing, this, having with her the sort of conversation he only ever had with men. “One hears of such things.”

  “Indeed, my lord, a disgrace to the art.” She curtsied. All very proper. You’d never look at her and think, here is a woman who has ruined herself beyond redemption. “Now, I’ve taken enough time from your training. You’ll grow too cold if you stand much longer so ill-dressed for inactivity.”

  “One question for you, if you will.”

  She quirked an eyebrow at him.

  “Clancy versus Granger before the month is out. True?”

  “All but settled.”

  “Clancy’s been training here?”

  Another smile flitted over her mouth. “He has been.”

  “I thank you, madam.” He bowed, and, as he watched her walk away, he remained unable to reconcile the fact of her marriage to Devil Wilcott to anything he’d ever believed of her.

  CHAPTER 10

  Lucy stared at the book sitting atop her dresser. This was Emily’s doing. There was no other way for The Gazeteer to have made the journey all the way from the bookshop in Bartley Green to her room. No one else would have thought of purchasing this book for her. For all her headstrong ways, Emily was generous to a fault. Her sister’s gesture was beyond thoughtful. She owed Emily a long, hard embrace and heartfelt thanks.

  With her Milton in Lord Thrale’s continued possession, The Gazeteer would provide her hours of enjoyment. She not always been an avid reader. As a girl, anything but. Their governess had despaired of her reading without constant prodding. She was ashamed, now, of her failure to apply herself. The one exception in her lack of educational success was her fascination with maps and globes. In this one arena, she had excelled.

  With a fond smile for her sister’s generosity, Lucy opened to the flyleaf, enjoying the sound and feel of the leather binding and the crisp, newly cut pages.

  There was an inscription. Arrogant black ink dominated the page.

  Not in her sister’s hand.

  Not signed by Emily.

  Mrs. Wilcott—

  May you have much enjoyment from the maps.

  Yrs, Thrale

  She slammed the book closed, but the words she’d read continued to accuse. She could see the bold strokes of the letters still.

  The Sinclair family had achieved a balance of sorts by never speaking of painful subjects. The loss of their mother so many years ago. The rarity of their father’s sobriety. How the house had been stripped of objects that could be sold for ready money. Merchants and tradesmen seeking payment. The fact that she was responsible for Anne being forced to marry the duke. Her marriage.

  She should never have told him about Devil. Never. But she’d encountered him at a time when she’d been feeling the loneliness of her widowhood. Devil, for all his faults, and hers as well, had been her husband. They’d had a difficult beginning, yet had found physical satisfaction together. There were times she missed that dreadfully.

  Peace between them had come only after Devil’s discovery of her research into his livelihood. He’d stood there with her pages and pages of compiled matches in hand, and he had so plainly studied what she’d done. His silence had terrified her. And then he’d said, “According to this, I don’t do as well against a left-handed fighter.”

  “You don’t.”

  “I’ll have to do something about that, then.”

  “You ought to, sir.”

  His acceptance had transformed her life. They’d become close, but this had changed everything. Everything. His reserve with her vanished even from their intimacy. He’d made her pulse race, and she hoped, believed, knew in her heart, that she had learned to do that for him. She missed Devil’s physicality. She missed having someone to talk to, to listen to, to listen to her.

>   In the middle of a moment when she’d been missing the physical closeness of her marriage, Lord Thrale had come along the river path. A pugilist in serious training—that had been her first thought, for no man who wasn’t serious about his fighting condition had a body like his or went out in the early morning on a breather. When she saw him, she’d thought, foolishly, with bittersweet longing, here is someone who will understand what I lost.

  Too late for circumspection. She was forever bared to him because she could never take back her disclosures. Because of her indiscretion, Lord Thrale knew more about her than anyone still living. Including her sisters. How foolish she’d been, telling him about her husband, conversing with him about pugilism and training or discussing which fighter might prevail against another. She feared his gift of the book. If he expected her to continue such disclosures, he’d flay her to the bone.

  He wasn’t Devil. He was a nobleman, and she’d been stupid, beyond stupid, to forget that.

  She picked up The Gazeteer and went in search of Lord Thrale. This book must not be in her possession a moment longer than necessary. As she walked, her shawl trailed off one shoulder and threatened to catch in her feet. Roger, following behind, did step on it, and she had some moments to untangle them from that.

  She found him in the second parlor again and strode in, Roger at her heels. “My lord.”

  “Mrs. Wilcott.” He rose, addressing her with no particular inflection. He dressed so plainly it was easy to forget he was a marquess, not a commoner. She would not make that mistake again. Despite his careful speech, his lack of superiority in manner, the way he cheerfully petted Roger, he did not inhabit the same world as her and never would. He’d not grown up with a father who squandered every penny or drank himself into oblivion every night. He’d not been coerced into a ruinous marriage for the sake of paying off the family’s debts.