A Notorious Ruin

by Carolyn Jewel

  She gathered her emotions and shrank them to a manageable size. Her heart misgave her for what she was about to do, but that was all the evidence she needed to know she was right. His attention focused on the book she held. “Good afternoon, my lord.”

  “A good afternoon to you, as well.” His eyes were gray. The color of a dawn sky, and when he looked at her, his calm regard lodged in her bones. Behind his aristocratic exterior was a man who could say they’ll hear you scream and make those words a promise of bliss.

  Roger, the traitorous hound, loped across the room to greet the man. The marquess obligingly bent to rub Roger’s back and shoulders.

  She did not trust him. Not one atom. Not one fraction of an inch. Never mind how much Roger adored him. The dog had lost his mind over someone who knew where to scratch. “What do you mean by this?”

  He glanced at her but did not stop petting Roger. “Your sister said you liked maps. She made a particular point of that. Several times.”

  “What has that to do with anything?” Damn him. Damn him for listening and hearing beneath the words.

  “It’s how I knew that was likely to be a book you would be pleased to have.”

  “I did not ask you to buy me anything.” He was a large man, and there was always a threat implicit when a man was made like that. She responded to the possibility that he would use his strength for her pleasure. In her imagination, he was in bed, naked. His cock hard and inside her, yes, and him looking at her, willing and able to give her what she needed. What she wanted and missed; the raw, hard, physicality that Devil had brought to their bed.

  He sighed. “Mrs. Glynn treated you abominably.”

  “Did you not stop to wonder if she had reason?”

  “I assumed she did not.” He quirked his eyebrows. “Was that wrong of me?”

  “You know why she finds me objectionable.” She never talked about this, never. The guilt of allowing the words to be said tore her apart. Her marriage was not a subject for discussion. He must know that. He must feel that as deeply as she did.

  “Because you married The Devil Himself.” He spoke matter-of-factly, but she saw the flicker in his eyes, his curiosity. She could feel his restraint, and that intrigued her against her will. She’d heard the gossip. The Marquess of Thrale had superior physical endowments. A woman who did not mind a man who was not a gentleman in bed would find herself well sated—if, if, she did not mind a bruise or two.

  Mrs. Glynn was right about her nature.

  “Because she believes her son admired you too much when you were practically children.”

  “He didn’t. He never did.”

  “I do not doubt that. But she believes it.”

  He was dangerous, Thrale was. The very best of fighters combined physical prowess with mental acuity, an insight into their opponents. In less than a second, a fighter read his opponent’s body and saw weaknesses to exploit, strengths to avoid or turn to his advantage. Thrale studied that art. The science. “I don’t want this,” she blurted out.

  “Madam.”

  The word was polite enough to have teeth.

  He went on in the same manner. “Captain Niall bought a fashion plate for each of you. I bought a book for all the ladies but you.”

  “I did not want his gift either.” She had made a life for herself here in Bartley Green. A space carved out in which she disappointed no one, and Thrale meant to pierce the veil. He would destroy her.

  “Why?”

  “It is enough, sir, that I must deal with Mrs. Glynn. Miss Glynn is a dear friend of Emily’s, and of Anne and Mary, too. Harry gets on with Aldreth, and if he meets Cynssyr, I daresay they will like each other as well. I don’t wish to be the cause of a break in their friendships.”

  “I had good evidence you would like that book.” His pale eyes held hers. “You will not have to pretend to enjoy it.”

  “I do not pretend to enjoy anything.”

  “You make my point for me.”

  “I enjoy a great many things, my lord, but—” Roger butted Thrale’s chest, in search of more affection, the poor deprived dog. “Roger, no. Come here. Pray, sir, do not be difficult. My express desire was that you not purchase any book for me. You cannot purchase one later and presume it is my desire now. On what grounds is that logical?”

  His gray eyes stayed steady on her. Her drawing room smile had no effect. None whatever. “My apologies. I was out of bounds. I did not intend to offend you.”

  She extended the book. Perverse creature that she was, she was sorry for his retreat. “I cannot accept this.”

  “Understood.” He straightened from petting Roger. “Leave it here, then. There’s room on the shelves for it. No one need know.”

  She gripped the book with both hands. The pages were filled with maps. Intricate, detailed maps that folded out to a sheet three times the size of the book, and she had, when at the booksellers, imagined the hours she could spend perusing the pages, absorbing all the places in the world one could visit. “I did not ask you to indulge me. I did not ask for a gift.”

  He smiled, a grin that reminded her he wasn’t a man who often smiled. That curve of his mouth made her stomach flutter. It was true, she thought amid the panic swirling in her head. He did not often smile. “I prefer to think I was indulging myself rather than you.”

  “I cannot leave it here.”

  “Why not?”

  “You inscribed my name in it. And yours. What if someone sees it?”

  Lord Thrale extended a hand and wiggled his fingers until she gave the book to him. He opened it to the inscription and scanned what he’d written.

  He walked to the fireplace, and she followed, horrified.

  “No. You cannot. You must not.”

  “Must not?” He moved aside the fire screen.

  She put a hand on his arm. “It won’t burn in there. You’d need a much bigger fire than that one.”

  He ripped the page from the book.

  “What have you done?”

  He crumpled the page and tossed it on the coals. “True. If I meant to burn the book, that is. One page, however, burns quite well.”

  Lucy froze with her hand on his arm. “Why? Why would you do such a terrible thing?”

  “The volume may now safely rest on one of those shelves.”

  She stared at the curling ashes. “You’ve murdered it.”

  “Murdered it.” He laughed. “I say I’ve solved the problem.”

  “You haven’t at all.”

  His grin faded, and her stomach fell to her toes when he held her gaze. She saw in his eyes an echo of how he’d looked at her when she’d been mad enough to challenge him to do to her whatever he wished.

  He said, “You fare poorly when someone is kind to you.”

  “It is not kind to deface a book.” She could not stop thinking of that encounter, nor her belief that he was the sort of man who put a woman’s back to the wall and took her hard and fast.

  “We have a difference of opinion, though I apologize sincerely. It was not my intention to upset or insult you.”

  His words, the way he said them, the sincerity of them, dampened her temper, but her visceral reaction to him intensified. He’d been thoughtful. Observant. Oh, indeed, he was a dangerous man.

  “Do you mistrust kindness in everyone?” He touched her cheek with the side of his smallest finger. A feather-light caress.

  CHAPTER 11

  Lucy froze, caught between the need to protect herself with whatever wits she had and the fact that he’d shaken her enough to crack the facade she showed the world. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” She turned her cheek, and the contact between them broke. The silence became intolerable. “On those rare occasions when I encounter it from people I do not know, yes, my lord. I do mistrust kindness. And so ought you.”

  He cocked his head, and her foreboding deepened. “I will solve you.”

  “I’m no great puzzle, my lord.” Men fell in love with her beauty. Lord T
hrale was a man and, therefore, could be distracted from the mistake she’d made with him.

  “You are.”

  She laughed, and it was a sound that had come from her during dozens of gatherings in London. Bright, airy, frothy and impermanent. Meaningless and empty. “There is nothing to understand.” She spread her arms at waist level. “See me, and you know all there is to know about me.”

  He gazed at her and during that moment, it struck her anew, harder and more viscerally than before, that beneath his clothes was a body of muscle and sinew. “That is not so.”

  Before her marriage, when she had no experience of men or what mattered in life, she’d preferred men like Captain Niall. Slender men. Elegant ones. Devil had proved to her that charm was well and good, but a man who did not shy away from the rough and physical spoke to her so imperfect soul. The sort of man who would take a morning breather up a hill and back.

  “It is so.” She laughed again, but he refused to be repelled. “It could not be more so, my lord.”

  “So say you. I do not believe it.”

  “You are free to have whatever fanciful notions suit you.”

  “You are kind to humor me.”

  “You’re most welcome.”

  “Sit a few moments with me?” He patted his coat pocket. “I’ve got Milton here. Let’s be dazzled by the iambs and imagine we could write half so well ourselves. When you’re done indulging me, you may borrow the Milton of me, and we’ll not speak of maps or kindness again.”

  As if bespelled, she sat on the nearest chair. As if she had no sense. When she was seated, Roger eyed her and then Thrale. “My own dog loves you more than he loves me.”

  “I am mere novelty to him, adept at scratching him.” Thrale placed The Gazeteer on one of the shelves then brought a chair close to her and sat.

  “We’ve not a large library here,” she said. Her head filled with images of him leaning over her, eyes locked with hers, and desire boiling between them. Would he be a rough lover, as he’d implied? Did she want that from him?

  “It suits the house.”

  “It’s why Emily and I go so often to the bookseller’s and the subscription library.”

  “You have a decent collection of books. The Milton, for example.”

  She waved a hand, glad for any subject that distracted her. “Most of the books that are left were favorites of our mama. The rest are new.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “I see. What of the ones that are not here?”

  Thank God, he did not ask her before when. A man like him, he’d make a picture of that, and an accurate one. Likely he already had. “Papa sold them. The ones we had before.”

  “She had excellent taste, then. Your esteemed mama. I presume the remaining books reflect the tastes of your mother and her daughters.”

  “My lord.”

  “I wish very much my home had a library as inviting as this one.”

  On the floor between her and Thrale, Roger flopped on his side, eyes closed. “Your home in London?” Her uneasiness settled. “Or do you mean another of your other vast, palatial estates?”

  “I was thinking of Blackfern. The family seat.” He stretched his legs to one side of Roger.

  “Have you a large collection of books there? I suppose you must.”

  “No.” There was a grimness to his smile.

  Here was the Thrale from London. A severe man who did not care for her. “I find that difficult to believe.”

  “Why, when my father and yours have so much in common?”

  “There is a tragedy. You poor man.” She regretted her informality the moment the words were said.

  “Your father emptied the library here. Mine gutted the library at Blackfern.”

  “I’m sorry to learn that happened. I know how devastated we were here when we found dearly beloved books gone.”

  “Even you, the young lady who would not read?”

  “Yes. Even me.” She shook her head in mock sorrow, but she remembered too well the shock of that day. “All the geography sold off. Not a single map left behind. It was worse for my sisters, of course, for they lost much more than I. Did you have a large collection of books? Before?”

  “The original library? Yes. But most all of it was for show, but for a few well-used volumes. Ones I’d hidden from him.”

  “Poetry?” She eyed the bulge in his coat pocket that was her Milton.

  “I was not the sort of boy who read poetry beyond what my tutor managed to force before my unwilling eyes.”

  “I shan’t believe that of you.”

  “As you wish.” He was a lion at rest, she told herself. It would be fatal to forget what happened on the hunt.

  “What did you prefer?”

  “Geography.” He lifted his hands, but she was not deceived by that dismissive gesture. “I assure you, it’s true. Treatises on farming. Mathematics. They were useful to me at the time. I wanted to save them when I discovered he meant to sell the whole lot.”

  “He sold them?” She curled her fingers around the edge of her chair. “Why?”

  His gaze darkened. “The sale funded a fête in which the library was turned into a woodland scene, complete with the accouterments of a Bacchanalia.”

  Her breath caught, but not with offense. “You mean an orgy.”

  He flushed, and Lucy was charmed. “Forgive me. A gentleman ought not speak of such subjects to a lady.”

  No never, she ought to say. “I was married, my lord. Do you imagine I learned nothing of men and what they find entertaining?”

  “No.”

  “Before I became a wife, I constructed absurd scenarios in which my future husband and I would read to each other from favorite books—that I had not read, mind you—and discuss them afterward.”

  He nodded. Not agreement, nor encouragement. Merely acknowledgment.

  “We would share an intellectual life, have interests in common, thoughts, hopes, and fears told to each other. We would have children and love them dearly. Our life would be idyllic.”

  “The future is seldom what we imagine it will be.”

  “True. So true.” Her chest tightened. “I never once imagined my life as it is now, nor the path that brought me here.” She thought of that silent carriage ride away from Bartley Green, with hardly a word between her husband and her. Every time he spoke, she heard the vast difference between them. “We began so badly, Devil and I.”

  “Did you?”

  She adjusted her shawl, and Thrale got up long enough to add a few more coals to the fire. “Barely speaking to each other, and Lord, his housekeeper so jealously guarded her domain. Devil wanted to show me off to his friends, the lady he’d married, and at the same time keep me from them. I own, I was the unhappiest bride there ever was.”

  “You did not stay unhappy, that much I know.”

  “All because one day, from boredom or possibly out of spite, I’ve never been sure which it was, I read his treatise on boxing.”

  “Then?”

  “I came to know him through the book, and he wasn’t what I thought at all. Nor was what he did every day what I’d thought. After that, I read the magazines he left everywhere, and followed his career. They wrote about him in those pages as if he were a hero or a god, even, and I know you are thinking, he was a prizefighter, a commoner, but when he discovered what I was doing, he did not forbid me.” She leaned forward, her eagerness to tell him of her triumph incapable of restraint. “We talked. In a way, it was everything I’d imagined as a girl. He told me more about pugilism and his study of what he did in the ring, and he did not think me incapable of understanding.”

  “A happy circumstance, then.”

  “He loved me. With all his heart, he loved me.” She wanted to cry, again, and again, and all over again, for the hole that losing him had left in her. “He loved me, and I cannot tell a soul for the shame of loving a man like him in return.”

  He said nothing, and it was just as well she could not speak. She counted the
pleats in her skirt. When she came to eleven, she was once again blank inside. She would win this contest of silence. She always did.

  She leaned an elbow on the arm of her chair and propped her chin on her closed fingers. “When I was a girl, I painted the maps in my geography texts, either after the original or with my own scheme.”

  “With watercolors?”

  “Anything else obscured the lines.”

  “I can see you now, bending over your table tracing and coloring maps. Engrossed as only the best student can be.” He interlaced his fingers and clasped his hands over his stomach.

  “I assure you, I was far from a good student. When I ought to have been practicing my German or Italian, I was tracing maps or painting them.”

  “My gift to the Sinclair library is a useful one then. You’ve a whole book of them to work from.”

  “Will you read more of the Mad Man to us?” Last night after dinner he’d read from the novel he’d bought in town, and she and Emily both had been enthralled by the tale.

  “I don’t see why I shouldn’t.” He crossed his legs the other way. “Unless you are unhappy with the story.”

  “I’m not. Not at all.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’ve read ahead, haven’t you?”

  “It’s a perfectly horrid novel.”

  She laughed. “Emily would be devastated if it weren’t.”

  He took her Milton from his pocket. “Do you care for poetry?”

  Passionate assent leapt to her lips, but she bit back words that would betray her more than she had already. “Does it matter?”

  “I suppose not, though that is no answer to my question.” This time, his smile was smooth, a thing of confident beauty that she distrusted. That smile reminded her he was the Marquess of Thrale, as far above her in rank as any man could be. She picked up one end of her shawl and began to count the strands of wool in one of the tassels.

  “You do, I expect.” Was he a man who made reckless love? Did he laugh during the act or was he formal and somber even then? Or was he the sort of man who lost himself and took his partner with him?

  “Do?” she asked.

  “Like poetry. Now. Confess, Mrs. Wilcott.” He leaned over and tugged on her shawl.