by Deb Marlowe
Certainly not today, at any rate. Flemming still stood across from him, waiting. He didn’t look up. “Was there something else, then?”
“Yes, sir. I wondered,” his secretary hesitated. “I wondered if there was something . . . special that I might do for you?”
That had him raising his head and piercing the man with a frown. “Special?”
Flemming nodded. “I can’t help but notice how restive you’ve been lately, your Grace. Even the staff has mentioned it.”
Aldmere waved a dismissive hand. “I’m fine.”
“Yes, sir. And yet, I thought there might be something I could do to help.”
He merely glared at the man and waited.
“It’s been a while since Lord Truitt has visited, I could send round a note. Or I could send an acceptance to one of the invitations, perhaps.”
“Good God, man, don’t do that.” Dropping the report, he stood. “Your concern—it is appreciated, but not necessary, Flemming. I am fine.”
But his secretary was not finished yet, it seemed. “Well then, I thought that we might investigate some of the issues going before the Lords,” he said in a rush. “A short speech, perhaps, just to awaken your old skills—”
He reared back, his fists clenching. Flemming paled.
Aldmere strived to tamp down the swift rise of anger. “Be careful where you are stepping,” he growled.
“Yes, sir. My apologies.” His man nodded unceasingly, his eyes riveted to the desk. “I won’t presume again, sir.”
Relenting, Aldmere scrubbed a hand along the back of his neck. “Go along and hunt up that mineral survey from the Northumberland estate then, would you? I need to go over it again.”
His secretary’s shoulders drooped as he trudged to his own small office off the back of the room. Aldmere, in turn, left his desk behind and went to stand by the window, trying to curb his spiraling irritation. Flemming’s intentions were good—but the man could have no idea of the turmoil inside of him. Yes, he’d been a firebrand once, ready to set the world ablaze with the strength of his passion and the power of his words. Known at school for his skills at debate and his idealistic fervor, he’d been sure that he would right wrongs and change the world.
But he’d been forced to change his grand plans when he’d inherited the title. And later, when he’d tried to reclaim his own dreams, fate had intervened, teaching him without mercy and with much pain, the folly of such youthful ambitions.
Yes, he’d been punished for his arrogance—but others had paid the price. As his penance he’d learned to embrace the counsel of older, wiser heads. And so he was left with duty and obligation, with a hollow emptiness inside of him and nothing to fill it besides this intermittent, restless ache.
Yet it hadn’t been so intermittent lately, had it? Discontent and agitation wouldn’t fade as it had in the past. It had a death grip on him and had ever since that fateful night of the Dalton’s ball, when he’d walked into that library and seen—
Her.
He gave a great start and stared out the window. Miss Brynne Wilmott. He wasn’t seeing things. She was right there on the pavement in front of his house.
Surprise numbed his brain. It rolled in waves down his spine and caught up short against an unexpected and inappropriate flush of pleasure.
She’d caught his interest that night. Later, he’d watched avidly as the scandal of her escape flared high and only begrudgingly died a slow demise. Eventually the crowds and the caricaturists and scandal rags had moved on, but he hadn’t forgotten.
Damn, but her rebellion had looked and felt so familiar. He told himself that was the explanation for his unusual attentiveness as he watched it play out and felt something stir up from his unplumbed depths. If he’d been younger he might have labeled the churning in his belly dread. But he’d left young behind long ago, and experience had taught him the meaning of words such as inevitability and cynicism. And so he’d wondered—was she still happy with the trade she’d made? Or had fate already stepped in to snatch her resolve out from under her? He’d resigned himself to never finding out.
Except that now she was here, rigid with purpose, right outside his home. In one hand she carried a parcel. The other gripped the wrist of a young man lagging behind her. The boy’s reluctance was clear, but she didn’t let it slow her down. Ignoring the fearful awe on his face, she yanked him along and marched boldly up the stairs.
Aldmere spun around. There was something there, deep inside his chest, far below the numbing layers of endless obligation and encompassing duty. A twitch. Interest? Intrigue? He could scarcely say.
From this distance her knock was muffled, but the ensuing argument with his butler was more easily discernible—and ringing clearer every second. He moved abruptly away from the window and back to his desk. Retrieving his report, he frowned down at it just as the door swung open.
She stalked into the room, ignoring his butler’s protests and tugging the youth behind her. And for the smallest moment in time, Aldmere stilled. Not just physically. All of him. Inside and out. Once again he found himself held in check by a peculiar green gaze. He stared, and shockingly, felt all the tumult inside of him ease.
“Your Grace.” The girl spoke and stepped forward. Dropped a perfunctory curtsy and broke the spell. And suddenly the restlessness was back with a vengeance, leaving him vibrating harder than his old music instructor’s tuning fork.
“Miss Wilmott, what a surprise,” he said smoothly. He stood. “It’s all right, Billings,” he said to the sputtering butler. “I’m acquainted with the young lady. I will see her and her friend, Mr. . . .?”
“Watts. Joe Watts, yer honor.” The boy—on closer viewing, Aldmere could see that he was indeed a young man, wiry, spotted and on the cusp of adulthood—snatched off his cap and worried it in his hands as Miss Wilmott relinquished his arm.
He nodded. “Just close the door on your way out, Billings.”
She didn’t wait for the closing click of the latch. “You made me a promise, your Grace, when last we met.”
“Hmm.” He set the report on the desk. “I do vividly recall the bit about no marriage proposals. I hope you haven’t changed your mind about that.” He gestured toward the seat before his desk and tried not to stare at her mouth. What he recalled was the promise of a kiss that lived there. And there it remained, waiting. Pointedly, he turned his gaze away.
“No one ever need know a thing about what happened here tonight,” the girl proclaimed saucily. Her color rode high, as did her chin. “Were those not your very words, your Grace?”
He did not answer at first. He just marveled at the sight of her here—so fey and dainty, such a frivolous looking creature, entirely out of place in this masculine shrine to power, privilege and obligation. Yet her spine continued ramrod straight, and there was nothing frivolous in the direct and steely way she met his gaze. She ignored the chair he’d indicated. Instead she strode forward, up to the very edge of his desk and planted herself there, a quivering testament to indignation.
“Were they?” He’d forgotten the intensity of her gaze. Emotion flowed over her face like sunlight over water.
He blinked to clear his thoughts. “Oh yes, they were.” He shook his head. “An easy promise for me to keep."
"Then why did you not?" she demanded.
He straightened. "I kept my word, Miss Wilmott. Though it didn't seem to guarantee your privacy, did it?" He scowled. "If you doubt me, then you should recall that although your name undoubtedly has become a byword in the papers, you’ll notice that mine has not.”
Truly, though, byword was too soft a name for what she had become. Scandal had bloomed three months ago when her disappearance from her father’s house became widely known—but that had been as nothing compared to the furor a few days later—when it was discovered just where she had gone.
Miss Brynne Wilmott had become a sensation. Londoners lived on a steady diet of scandal broth and her story was the thickest, meatiest
offering to come down the pike in years. Newspapers, scandal sheets and pamphlets had blanketed the streets. The city’s caricaturists had exploded into action. She’d been painted a villainess, a fool, a heroine or a cautionary tale, depending on who was talking and just who might be listening. Mobs of onlookers crowded around Hestia Wright’s house for days on end. They all wanted to see the baron’s daughter who had abandoned the safety of her father’s house and the promise of the Season’s best match to go and live in a house full of fallen women and semi-repentant whores. Everyone repeated the story, from the most elegant parlors of the West End to the lowest taverns in the East. Everyone in London and beyond burned with a single question: Why?
Truth be told, the question had echoed in his own mind as well. “I admit to being puzzled by your actions. You begged me, that night, to keep quiet about your troubles and our meeting. Discretion, you assured me, was the key to getting out of your predicament.” He frowned at her. “And yet, straight off you ran to the most notorious woman in London and ignited a scandal the likes of which London has never seen. So tell me, Miss Wilmott, why did you do it?”
She laughed. “That does seem to be the question of the Season, does it not?” Pursing her lips, she stared at him for a moment. “Do you know, I’ve seen that question in print often enough in the past three months, but you are the first person to ask me outright.”
He recoiled slightly. “Surely not.”
“I’m afraid so.” She shrugged.
“You expect me to believe that your father—”
“Raged, threatened and wept after he found me, but he never asked. He had no need to, truly—and in the end he threw his hands in the air and declared them washed clean of me.”
Aldmere frowned. “No need to ask why?” But comprehension dawned. “You told him, and he didn’t stand with you against Marstoke?”
Her gaze dropped for the first time as she bent her head.
He recalled the shaky fear that had lurked beneath her bravado that fateful evening, the quaver that had broken through her bold words, and the tear in her gown. “But did you explain . . . everything about that evening?”
“In detail. All of it except for your part.”
The bastard. Aldmere’s fists clenched. But then he realized. “Marstoke had a hold over him too,” he said flatly. For a moment he contemplated what it might be that would lead a man to forsake his own daughter, then he turned his focus back onto the girl. “I still don’t understand, though—why Hestia Wright?”
The boy at her side made a small noise and Aldmere watched her curb him with narrowed eyes before she turned back to glare at him. “I came here today to ask a question or two, your Grace, but I will answer this one—because I want you to understand the ramifications of what has happened.”
She squared her shoulders. “I confess, I ran to Hestia because of her reputation. Who else would stand against my father? Not his family, such as is left. My mother’s family is in Wales and lost contact long ago. My friend Jane might have helped me, but her mama would have marched me right back home. There was Hestia Wright, however, glamorous, beautiful, and well known for having powerful friends at every level of society. Even more notorious for offering refuge and standing firm at the side of any woman in trouble.” She sighed. “I didn’t understand the sort of difficulties I would bring to her door with my own notoriety. Nor did I know then of her long standing feud with Lord Marstoke.”
Aldmere opened his mouth to ask a question, but then closed it abruptly. She was starting down tangents he had no business following. He held up a hand. “Why are you here, Miss Wilmott?”
Her lips pinched shut. She glanced around, took in the richness of the study and waved a hand. “Perhaps you will not be able to understand. Clearly you have never lost everything, been left bereft and empty and alone. Been forced to start anew.”
“Wrong,” he said flatly—then immediately regretted revealing even such a small thing.
Her gaze shifted to assessing. It wandered over him, taking his measure in the most innocent fashion, yet he felt himself oddly exposed, and inexplicably hot.
“Then you might understand my feelings,” she hurried on. “Hestia Wright is a treasure. The women who come to her most often have no choice, no options. Like me. She saved me, your Grace.”
“At what cost?” he snorted. “You gave up more than an unwanted betrothal when you set foot in her house. You lost your status, your reputation and your position in Society.”
She leaned in. “Better than trading it all for a lifetime of abuse and misery. The men in my life were duty-bound to protect my interests, and instead they betrayed me in favor of their own.” Her gaze narrowed. “I would have lived in the streets rather than marry the marquess, but I didn’t have to. Because a stranger took me in, gave me a home, and sheltered me from the frenzy that my actions created.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Do you think I miss my reputation? I lost my identity. If I’m no longer my father’s daughter, then who am I?”
Lord, what a spitfire she was, coming in here and laying bare her soul. She stirred his sympathies as well as his senses. But he wasn’t going to make the mistake of letting her know it. Deliberately, he shifted, let his impatience show.
She saw it, and raised a brow. “A dilemma you are likely unfamiliar with, your Grace. You are fortunate. It’s a harrowing question to have to face. But Hestia Wright has given me a chance to explore the answers. I’ve had the freedom to discover who I want to be. And now I have the chance to make it happen.”
Anger bloomed again in her face. “Or I did, until this morning. It’s been such a relief, these past weeks, to wake up full of plans and hope. But your carelessness has put all of that in danger. Worse yet, your loose lips could be the ruin of everything that Hestia has labored to build—and that is a far greater crime.”
“Loose lips?” He straightened. “I've already told you, I kept my word and told no one of or encounter. I wouldn't. I don't believe in such interference. I told you I wouldn’t mention our encounter. I have not.”
“Truly?” She blazed with so much skepticism and disbelief that he could have warmed his hands over her. “Then how, sir, do you explain this?” She unwrapped the parcel she carried and slapped a sheaf of paper down onto his desk. Unexpectedly, her eyes darted away. “You might have warned me, at least.”
“About what?” He cast a sardonic glance at the stack of handwritten pages before transferring it to her. “What is it, Miss Wilmott? Have you put your exploits into the pages of an adventure novel?”
“Don’t be absurd.” He saw her draw in a quick, sharp breath. “It’s the List.”
“List?” He raised a brow. “Of market items? Fabric and furbelows for your new gown?”
“You are the only one to find this amusing, your Grace, I assure you. Would you have me believe that it was someone else who shared the story of that horrid evening with your brother?” She huffed and crossed her arms. “And although you—and all of London’s lowest orders, apparently—might be familiar with the List, it was only through happenstance that I discovered it at all.” She turned slightly and shot a dark look at boy at her side. “Happenstance and sheer effrontery, I should say.” She tossed her head. “It’s clear that neither Hestia nor I was meant to see this before publication was complete. I only hope that I have found it in time to put a stop to it.”
“Hold a moment.” He pressed two fingers against his temple. “You’ve lost me, I’m afraid. This is a list—of what, exactly?”
“It’s The List, sir!” The young man spoke up at last. “The one everyone’s been talking of. The Love List!”
“The what?” he asked, incredulous. He leaned forward, suddenly intent. “And what has any of this to do with my brother?”
“Surely you are not serious?” Miss Wilmott’s eyes had narrowed. “All of this time and you are still not aware that this is what your brother has been up to?”
He shook his head. He wasn’t aware, because for t
he first time that he could recall, his brother had chosen an issue to stand firm on. Tru wouldn’t discuss Marstoke, or the reasons why he was spending his nights trolling through the worst stews in the city. Aldmere, torn between pride, relief and the ever-present desire to shake his brother until his teeth rattled, had instead left him alone.
“Is this it—what he’s been working on?” He reached across and pulled the stack close. The papers were unbound. He ran his finger along the edge until, about a third of the way down, he cut the stack like a deck of cards and stared down at the exposed page.
Maiden Lane Jane, at No. 16
This plump little pocket Venus may lack a surname, but she makes up for it with her infamously generous bosom and kinder heart. Comfort is her specialty, and for the regular rate she will welcome a gentleman with all the warmth and care of a beloved spouse. Quite skilled is Jane, as evidenced by the number of businessmen who make a call on her part of their routine on visits to Town. She never tires of love’s play and will sigh and squirm and murmur in a fashion that never fails to provide satisfaction.
Good God. Surely not? Refusing to meet Miss Wilmott’s gaze, he flipped to a page near the middle.
Mrs. Hillary, No. 9 Wardour Street
Here is a widow lady, very tall, dark of hair and proud in her air. She is very genteel, having been married to a clergyman, and very strict in admitting visitors. Her price is high and her propensity is for the birch rod discipline. For the asking, she will whip a man for his sins, or for an extra two pounds, bring in one of her naughty girls and smart her bum for his gratification.
He could feel the heat rising from his neck. “Tru wrote this?” He had to choke the words past the mortification lodged in his throat, but he knew the answer beforehand. The handwriting was familiar and those descriptions reeked of his brother’s slightly ironic brevity of wit. “I don’t understand. What is all of this about?”
