A Notorious Ruin

by Carolyn Jewel

  Anticipation turned the world more vivid yet. Satan sat on his shoulder and whispered that he should accept what she offered. If she was willing, why not? “Don’t bring me down that path. I can’t. Not with you.”

  “Why?”

  Roger whined and that broke the spell between them.

  CHAPTER 13

  At the moment, Lord Thrale was unaware she’d taken root in the parlor doorway or that she was not master of herself. It was nearly midnight, and he sat reading by the fire, one foot braced on the fender. He’d moved one of the lamps to a nearby table to increase the steady light. His informal attire unsettled her more than seeing him stripped to a shirt and fighting britches. In his loose coat, striped trousers, and felt slippers, he was undeniably a gentleman at his leisure.

  She had a three-quarter view of him from where she stood. In repose, there was an appealing solidity to him. A calmness. Beneath that restraint was tightly leashed violence. Devil had been like that. He’d had that same restraint. He’d been able to face another man and, without mercy or compunction, use mind and body to send his opponent to his knees. Johnson had confided to her that Thrale had done just that to one of his most promising young fighters.

  Roger left her to join Thrale. After stroking the dog’s head, he looked to the doorway. She registered his surprise, then pleasure—could that be so?—at seeing her. He stood, a book in one hand. “Madam.”

  “My lord.” Last season she’d wondered why Anne had been his loyal supporter. She understood now. He was an honorable man. Alas, friendship between her and Thrale was neither wise nor safe. He seemed to have come to the same conclusion, for he had avoided her most of the day. But they got on, she and Thrale, and like Anne, she was now his staunch defender.

  His expression did not change. There was nothing in his attitude or the way he looked at her to suggest he’d said or done anything improper with her. They’d skirted that line, no more. Nothing irrecoverable. “Come in, please. Don’t let me prevent you from finding something to read.”

  She walked halfway to where he stood with Roger. Words tumbled around in her head, and rather than allow the silence to turn uncomfortable, she plucked words that leapt to mind. “Did you spar at the Academy today?”

  “Yes.” He touched a spot at the head of his right shoulder. His grimace was mostly feigned. “I was well instructed.”

  “I used to put liniment on Devil’s bruises.” The house was quiet. The servants were abed. Before she came here, Emily had retired for the night. Her father, too, since Captain Niall had gone into Bartley Green to dine in town. “Basilicum powder on his cuts, if he had them.”

  “Such tender mercy.”

  “Johnson says you are strong.”

  “Does he?”

  “Quick, he told me. With a hint of the vicious.”

  Thrale cocked his head.

  “You hit hard.”

  “I mean to.”

  “A little weak to your left.”

  “I am addressing that.”

  “Yes. He told me that, too.” She considered him as she would any fighter. He had Devil’s build, the physique of the great Jim Belcher. “If you weren’t a nobleman, Johnson said he’d have you training for a career in the ring.”

  “Rank flattery.”

  “No, sir, I say emphatically now. Johnson might flatter you, I suppose, when he speaks to you. But you were not there, and there are reasons—” She kept her back to the chimney with its mantel-to-ceiling mirror. She could hardly tell him about her wagers or that Johnson was one of the ways she kept abreast of which battles might go one way or another.

  “Yes?”

  She got a look at the book he held and lifted a hand to forestall any more from him on the subject of bruises. “What’s this? Do not tell me you are reading The Mad Man.”

  With a smile, Thrale hid his book behind his back.

  “Emily and I turned the front parlor upside down looking for that.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Why, to read ahead, of course. You stopped at a most thrilling moment.”

  “I stopped at the end of the chapter.” He shrugged with feigned innocence. “You must endure the suspense, ma’am, as does everyone else.”

  “Except for you. You know if the Duc survived the banditti attack.”

  He laughed. “If you want a good reading from me, I must have some idea of what is to come.” Roger demanded attention and, to oblige the dog, he set the book on the floor beside him and crouched to pet him. “Good evening, old man.”

  “Roger, come.” She hurried to him and would have hooked her fingers in the dog’s collar, but Thrale waved her off.

  “This magnificent boy? He’s not bothering me. Never.” Roger sighed, and Thrale reached around to scratch his belly. Devil’s dog was in love with him, slavishly in love.

  “Since you cannot read The Mad Man, Mrs. Wilcott, is there another book you would like?” He glanced at the shelves. “A volume of maps, perhaps? Or would poetry be more to your tastes?”

  She shook her head. The silence required of her here had carved a place for her memories of Devil. There was a wall around that hollow built to impenetrable thickness. Until Thrale. Her heart raced at the thought that with Thrale, she had been given a small space to give voice to herself. The woman she was, not the one she had to be.

  “I won’t believe you don’t care for poetry.” He went back to petting Roger. The dog lay at his feet in a state of utter relaxation.

  She should not tell him anything. Not one more confidence about her marriage. “Once…”

  “Yes?”

  “Once, I read Wordsworth to my husband. Early in our marriage, but not so early that I did not think there was a hope he’d listen. He wasn’t an educated man, but he wasn’t stupid.”

  “He was not.”

  He agreed as if Devil’s intelligence could not be in doubt. Lucy, accustomed to the assumption that her husband had possessed no redeeming qualities, was taken aback. Relief and gratitude overcame her. “He read a great deal, you know. He wrote, too, and well. You have read him, those words were his.” Indeed, she was Thrale’s loyal supporter. “Still, I ought to have known better than to read poetry to him.”

  “Because?”

  She clasped her hands behind her back, remembering the days before they had found solid ground beneath them. She could smile about the incident now, but at the time, she’d been angry and devastated. “Before I’d finished the first poem, he snatched the book away and pitched it out the window and into the gutter.”

  “Good God, why?”

  Thrale’s outrage brought another smile from her, and she was glad to have shared the story with him, even though it was foolish of her to do so. “He was too pragmatic for poetry. If I’d paid more attention to him at the time, I’d have known that. In the event, I never again attempted to convince him of the beauty for words for their own sake.”

  “I expect,” he said, rubbing Roger’s belly as he spoke, “that had he lived, you would have found poems that spoke to him.”

  A different silence filled up the room, and it terrified her, burned behind her eyes, closed off her throat. Would they have? She would go to her grave never knowing.

  “Mrs. Wilcott?”

  She pulled herself from the morass of what might have been. She and Devil had made their peace, but, in truth, she did not believe he would have come to love poetry as she had. Instead, verses for her became a secret, solitary indulgence. “Forgive me, my lord. What did you say?”

  “You have no interest in reading Milton?” His hand rested on Roger’s shoulder. “But of course not. You came here for The Mad Man. I fear you must abandon all hope of that.”

  They were friends. They were, as foolish as that was. They were friends as he and Anne were friends; within the bounds of what was proper. She would be as loyal to him as Anne. More. She returned his grin. “Perhaps one day The Mad Man will vanish from your quarters.”

  “Unlikely. He is perman
ently ensconced in my life.” He scratched behind Roger’s ear and then stood, retrieving his book from the floor. He dropped it on the table beside his chair.

  “It happens I am a renowned sneak thief in the Sinclair household. Ask any of my sisters which of us could be counted on to find or liberate an item not currently in our possession.”

  “You underestimate my resourcefulness.” His stern delivery would have been more terrifying if the corner of his mouth had not twitched.

  “My lord.” She held both sides of her skirts and curtsied. Never mind that she found him physically appealing. Never mind that. His friendship was too precious to jeopardize. There was no one else she could talk to about her past. About Devil and boxing. She couldn’t bear to lose that. “You underestimate mine.”

  “I think not.” His smile flashed again. He was built like Devil, but there the similarities ended. With Devil, there had never been wordplay like this. Conversations never slid along on multiple levels. “That was not meant as an insult. I am wholly on guard where you are concerned.”

  “I might trip and knock you down a flight of stairs?”

  They referred to the events leading to Anne’s marriage to the duke, which had begun when Lucy had tripped and knocked her sister down half a flight of stairs. She had been the cause of that accident, and that accident had led to a marriage that had, for some time, seemed certain to doom Anne and the duke to a life of unhappiness.

  “Such mishaps occur from time to time.”

  “Too often to me. Don’t deny it’s so.”

  He held her gaze. She did not want to acknowledge the shiver that went through her. “I continue to work out the puzzle you present.”

  “There is no puzzle.”

  “Mrs. Wilcott.” His gaze flicked over her, and it was shocking, the jolt of her response to his look. Disaster would result if this went beyond words. “I will unravel you.”

  She drew a breath, for there were too many meanings in his words, and in his eyes. Too many, and it was wonderful and wicked. “Here I thought I would make off with the Mad Man and be on my way.”

  “You might yet.” His slow smile sent another spiral of heat through her. “If you are quicker than I. And cleverer.”

  “Oh, but I’m not clever. Not at all.”

  “I disagree.”

  “I can’t think what you mean, sir.”

  “Since you cannot have The Mad Man, allow me to suggest something else. To be sure, material improving to your cleverness.”

  How daring she felt, engaging in such banter. “I daresay there is much in me that needs improvement.”

  He bowed. “If only you knew something of literature, ma’am.”

  “If only I’d paid more attention in the schoolroom.”

  “I did not read much as a boy. Like you, I had scant familiarity with literature. Like you, not until later in life did I take up the poets.”

  She looked at him sideways. “Do you prefer your poets dead or living?”

  “It depends on whether I’m having them to dinner.”

  “A dead poet makes for stiff conversation.”

  He let out a bark of a laugh, and she joined him in that. He took a book from the pocket of his coat. It was her Milton. “This is a favorite poet of mine. A shame you have no interest.”

  “Hm.” She rocked back on her heels. This was novel for her, that anyone would engage with her as if he believed in her wit, or that she could reply in kind. She would not dare with anyone but him. “The fellow who wrote that book seems a poet of some talent.”

  “So they say.”

  “But he wrote of Hell, sir. Or did I mishear?”

  “You did not. Blasphemy of the worst sort.”

  “When would a work with the devil in it not be blasphemous?” she asked.

  He crossed his arms over his chest. He was teasing her, and she was amused. “Do you mean to suggest, ma’am, that the Bible is blasphemous?”

  “The Bible is not a novel.” She’d thought of him as stern and colorless, a man who would never interest her. How wrong she’d been.

  “True enough.”

  She strolled toward the window by a circuitous path. The curtains were drawn against the night. As she ambled, one hand slipped over the top of the chairs and tables. Roger, though he remained by Lord Thrale, watched her progress through the room.

  She walked toward his chair. “What was the name of the other novel you said you enjoyed? I can’t recall from one moment to the next what I’ve read or only read about. I read Papa’s Sporting Magazine this morning.” She touched a finger to her chin. “And The Times. I read the advertisements every day, or as often as I can, at any rate. As to poetry, why, I mayn’t have read a poem in an age.” She picked up the volume of The Mad Man and flipped the pages without looking at them. “Pentameter, iambs, couplets, stanzas. I can’t keep them straight.”

  “Tut, tut, Mrs. Wilcott. Do you think I am so easily fooled?” He took the book from her.

  “What do you think of Wordsworth?” She tapped the tabletop.

  “He is no Milton, but I find him compelling for different reasons.” He held up the Milton. “One is safer with Mr. Wordsworth’s scenes from nature, I think, when Satan might appear in these pages at any moment.”

  “I don’t know how you expect me to sleep tonight, with talk like that.”

  He pressed the Milton to his chest and grinned at her. “I should hate to think of you awake at night, unable to sleep for the terror. Allow me, Mrs. Wilcott, to prevent this book from disturbing your tender sensibilities. I shall take it with me to my room. In order to spare you a sleepless night.”

  “You are all that is generous.” She bent a knee.

  “You may safely retire to bed without a mad man or a devil.”

  They locked gazes. “I’ll never sleep, now,” she said.

  CHAPTER 14

  Lucy’s heart beat a tattoo against her ribs when Arthur Marsey planted himself in her path a few steps past the Bartley Green stationer’s. Roger stayed close to her side. She had made it plain, she thought, that she wished nothing to do with him. If he had any decency, he would let her be.

  “What a delightful surprise to see you here.”

  “I cannot say the same.” Ice coated her reply. She wrapped herself in that same frozen response. Roger pressed against her thigh, and she rested the tips of her fingers on his shoulder. She glanced at Arthur and he at her, and then, without a word, she moved past him.

  He caught her elbow, and she whirled, offended that he dared accost her. “Unhand me.”

  His grin sent a shiver down her spine. “Mrs. Wilcott.”

  She dislodged his hold on her. Roger’s whine evolved to a snarl.

  “Keep that beast under control.”

  Oh, that familiar scorn. During her marriage to Devil, she’d often seen that arrogant dismissal from people like Marsey. She’d become inured, as she had likewise become inured to those who had not welcomed her in Devil’s life. More than one gentleman who’d met her believed her status as the wife of a fighter made her fair game.

  She walked away, but he matched her stride. “What cause have you to be so proud, I should like to know?” He kept his tone light, but Lucy heard the nasty undercurrent.

  “Leave me be, sir.”

  “Quite a come up in the world for you, isn’t it?” He edged in front of her and blocked her way. Roger growled. Marsey patted one of his pockets. “I won’t hesitate to shoot that monster. Damn me if I won’t.”

  Lucy hooked her fingers in Roger’s collar. “I have nothing to say to you, sir.”

  He touched his upper chest in a half-bow. She knew that smile too well. That charming smile had been present all the while he was robbing Devil. “Don’t play the grand lady with me. I know better. Captain Niall has become your ardent admirer. What he will think when I tell him the truth?”

  “Even if you have already, he can think nothing others don’t.” She tried again to get around him and failed.

>   “What? No interest in the captain? I’ll say that speaks well of you, that you know you should have none. But who have you set yourself to capture if not him? Never say it’s that young fellow, Mr. Glynn? A sly dog if it is.”

  “Leave me be.”

  “No. It can’t be Glynn.” He had her backed against the wall of a shop. Roger growled, and she soothed him. “Not with that dragon of a mother.”

  “No, of course not. She dislikes me heartily.” She tried to walk around him, but he continued to block her way. She gave him a poisonous look. She’d spent time with a rougher sort of crowd and had not crumbled then. She would not now. He didn’t know the woman she’d become since she came home. Hard inside. Hard as iron.

  “Is it Lord Thrale?” He kept his voice low. “What a coup that would be to have him among your admirers. Your protector. Better him than Glynn or the captain. You’re wise to set your sights on a higher rank this time.”

  “Yes, that’s it precisely. I’ve had no luck so far. Alas. He is too much a gentleman for me, I fear.”

  “Don’t be disrespectful to your betters.”

  “Never.” She gave him a frosty smile.

  “I am to meet with Captain Niall tomorrow.” His supercilious smile deepened. “It seems I may be of assistance to him in certain ventures.”

  “I shall warn him.”

  He checked himself, and, in that moment, she saw what not even Devil had suspected; that he was filled with hate. He’d despised Devil for having money, for his success, and for making a life that was not the one he’d been born into. “That would not be wise.”

  “I have never been a particularly wise woman.”

  He blocked the walkway and stood too close. She said nothing. Refused to look at him or speak to him. Was there no one to see that she had been accosted? She glanced across the street where several men spoke in excited tones. One of them hailed Marsey.

  “You are wanted there.”

  Marsey looked her up and down. “I had rather be wanted here.”

  “Do not think, Mr. Marsey, that I have forgotten anything. I have not.”

  He tipped his head the merest amount while his smile dripped treacle. She endured his slow, insulting, appalling, consideration of her person. “Nor have I. Believe me, nor have I.”