Yet in his quest, he’d not given true thought to the people who’d be left in ruins, all to exact his due. Perhaps, in this, he was like his father after all. Failing to think about those he’d leave behind in his wake. That unwanted realization robbed him of breath and he pressed his fingertips into his temples to drive back the thought.
With every encounter, Justina became real. A woman who loved literature and spoke her mind. Nick swiped a hand down his face. I am a weak fool. Had Lord Rutland shown any compunction or regret in his vile deeds through the years? No, and as such he did not seek to destroy any other family than the one linked to the man who’d destroyed him.
If he abandoned a vow he’d made thirteen years ago, all because of a woman he’d known for a week’s time, what did that say about him? It would prove he was that same, pathetic boy with a book of poetry clutched to his chest, quaking with fear as Rutland upended his world.
Steeling his heart and shoving his very real fear to the side, he started back for Lord Wessex’s ballroom.
Chapter 11
The following evening at a table in Forbidden Pleasures, one of the more wicked clubs in London, Nick stared into the contents of his brandy, feeling…empty. He’d hungered for revenge the way a starving man did food and drink. Only, to be handed over everything so easily left him strangely hollow.
Just days ago, all he had known about Justina Barrett was that the lady paid frequent visits to Gipsy Hill and had the misfortune of being sister-in-law to one of the vilest bastards in London. Now he knew she read poetry and visited circulating libraries to attend lectures. Dreamed of love and wished to write her own romantic verses.
And had a bloody bastard for a father who’d wagered away her future.
He tightened his hold on his drink, drawing forth the memories conjured when he looked into a glass of brandy; the bottle upended on his father’s desk. The liquor stain upon those documents and the floor. Except, those memories would not come. Instead, in their place were the wistful blue eyes of a lady whose ruin couldn’t have been easier had she been handed a script and given her lines.
With a curse, Nick tossed back his drink in a long, slow swallow, welcoming the fiery blaze as the liquid trailed down his throat. He set the empty glass down hard and the droplets clinging to the edge fell onto the table. Then, he refilled his glass, hoping to drive those eyes from his mind.
Seated across from him, Chilton shifted in his chair. “You’re in a foul mood.”
“I’m always in a foul mood,” he muttered, skimming his restless stare about the club.
“Yes, that’s true,” his friend conceded with a grin.
Nick looked beyond Chilton’s shoulder and froze; his gaze locked on the fat, foul, Viscount Waters. The sweaty lord, with a young beauty on his lap, bellowed with laughter, the sound muffled by the riotous noise of the club. The man buried his face in the voluptuous creature’s ample bosom and bestowed his favor on her flesh.
Inked words penned inside a journal flitted through his mind. …It sustains them through miserable childhoods with indifferent fathers, who betray the vows made to their wives… He should be elated that Waters, with his failings, made his plans for revenge so bloody easy.
Waters wrapped his sausage-like fingers in the lady’s blonde tresses and angled her face for a hard kiss. Nick peeled his lip back as revulsion snaked through him and he looked away from the loathsome tableau.
Chilton followed his stare. “I gather he is the reason for our visit this evening.”
He gave a curt nod. The sole reason he’d taken up membership at the club and frequented it even now was to further drag the Barretts down the path to ruin by watching the man. With the wagers his own father had made in his business ventures, Nick had lauded and aspired to ruthless logic in every aspect of his life: from matters of business, to revenge, to the women he took to his bed.
He continued to assess Justina’s father. The man drew his fleshy face out of the woman’s neck, a woman of an age to Justina, and he gestured over a statuesque creature with midnight black hair and crimson lips. Bile stung the back of Nick’s throat, as the old viscount bestowed his vile attentions on the two beauties.
“Are you certain you’re set on this course?” Chilton asked stealing another peek at Waters. “I expect it’s a punishment all in itself to have in-laws such as the Barretts.” He gave a discreet wave and Nick followed his subtle gesture to the youngest Barrett sibling. Seated several tables over from his sire, Andrew Barrett tossed coins down at a hazard table.
These were the men Justina Barrett’s security and well-being fell to—a treacherous father and a wastrel of a brother? While the young lady worried after her future and battled the pressures to marry a scoundrel who owned her father’s debt, these two lords saw after their own pleasures, and not much more. And her sister had joined their family to the blackest scoundrel in London.
A muscle jumped at the corner of his eye. Mayhap the lady was better in his care, after all. He blinked slowly. Where in blazes had that thought come from?
“Have you yet considered,” Chilton’s quiet murmur brought him back to the moment, “when you marry the chit, you’ll be forever bound to these reprobates?” The other man grimaced and took a sip of his drink.
Nick would be bound to her. Her family, he needn’t see after the day he took those binding vows. He’d have his final say with Rutland and revel in the moment the man belatedly realized his sins had caught up with him.
Just as he needn’t see Justina after their marriage. He didn’t give a jot about an heir to a title that meant nothing to him. “It hardly matters,” he said tightly. Liar. It matters. “I’ll have no dealings with them beyond the day I call in those debts.” And he would have his retribution. He’d not abandon thirteen years’ worth of hatred for a short while of knowing a lady.
Chilton searched his eyes over Nick’s face. “You will let your hatred destroy you.”
Nick flattened his lips. He’d been destroyed long ago. What would life have been had he not been a victim of his father’s failings and the marquess’ evil? A bucolic image flitted in of he and Justina, poring over a copy of Evelina, discussing Burney’s verses. How very real that tableau was.
Too real. He flexed his jaw. Any happiness belonging to him had been destroyed long ago by the lady’s brother-in-law.
“And what of the lady when she is your wife?” his friend pressed. Nick went still as the quiet recrimination ran through him with an unwanted sharpness. “Will you expect her to so easily cut off all ties with her family because her husband ruined them?”
…My mother would never dare limit what I read. She always lived to see her children happy…
No, a mother who’d sought to fill her children’s life with love and joy would not be a woman his wife would so easily cut from the fabric of her life. And yet, how much thought had he truly put into life with Justina Barrett after he’d destroyed her father, brother, and Rutland?
“It is not too late to alter your plan,” Chilton said with a quiet insistence.
Did the other man sense his wavering? Not once had Edmund Deering, the Marquess of Rutland, deviated in his ruthless dismantling of Nick’s father and, with that, the entire Tallings family.
“You are not a man who’s rotted to the core,” his friend persisted. “I know those men.” The other man tugged his chair closer and dropped his elbows on the table. “I deal with men whose souls are beyond redemption. You are driven by revenge…and that is an entirely different matter. Very few can countenance a life of darkness. You are not one of them.”
His friend did not know the blackness in Nick’s soul. Chilton couldn’t begin to understand the demons that haunted a man who’d cut his father’s lifeless body down and who’d then been forced to perpetuate a lie to save his mother and sister. He flexed his jaw and, unable to meet the probing intensity of Chilton’s stare, glanced around at the other lords present—unfaithful husbands, diffident fathers. Men who’d been nothing
like his own loyal, loving sire.
He firmed his resolve. “My path was cemented long ago.” Except… He glanced briefly at Waters embroiled in a game of faro with the Marquess of Tennyson, the man who sought to lay claim to Justina Barrett. A hard smile on his lips, he said something that made the Viscount Waters guffaw. This was the evil in Justina’s life. She was a lady who’d somehow retained her glimmer of hope amongst the mire that was her actual circumstance, and he would be the one to ruin that. Nausea broiled in his gut.
“You’re not a man to ruin an innocent,” Chilton quietly pressed, following the direct path Nick’s thoughts had traversed. “You can have your revenge without breaking her heart.”
With his friend’s arguing, he remained silent, an internal battle raging within him. He’d despaired of ever having retribution against Lord Rutland until the man had gone and married and, at last, shown a weakness to the world. That weakness was the woman he’d married—Lady Phoebe Deering and her family.
For two years, Nick had devoted his days to plotting that family’s ruin. He’d failed to see them as people—until he’d slid into that damned lecture hall seat and witnessed the spirit of a young lady amidst a group of disapproving dandies and lords. Such a woman did not deserve to pay for Rutland’s crimes.
With a curse, he tossed back the contents of his glass in a long, slow swallow that burned the back of his throat. He dragged over the bottle and poured himself another drink. Liquid droplets splashed over the top. Goddamn Chilton for being correct.
A serving woman sashayed over with a tray and, not taking his gaze from Nick, Chilton waved her off. With a pout, the lady shifted direction for another table of gentlemen. “You do not need to be the one to ruin this family. They,” Chilton jerked his chin first toward Andrew Barrett and then to the father, “will continue down that path with someone ultimately destroying them.”
“If I allow that, then I’m not the one to bring that fall. Where is the retribution against Rutland then?” he demanded.
His friend clung on like a dog with a bone. “Fine, destroy his reprobate father-in-law and wastrel brother. The lady will be sold to a gentleman who owns her father’s debt and Rutland will watch them suffer, through actions that had nothing to do with you.”
Nick curled his hands tight around his glass, draining the blood from his knuckles as Chilton’s logic cracked through the wall of hatred he’d built about himself. Ultimately, she would be shattered by life, but it would not be at his hands. I cannot do it. I cannot ruin her. There would have to be another way. And a staggering shame and disgust at his own weakness swelled deep inside, bringing his eyes closed with the weight of his own failings. He’d spent thirteen years shaping himself in the Marquess of Rutland’s image, only to find himself frail in ways the marquess never had been, nor ever would be.
He opened his eyes and stared blankly down at the smooth surface of the mahogany table. Yes, he could easily ruin the whole of the Barretts. But that did not require he steal Justina’s heart and bind her to him with a lifetime reminder of her foolishness and his treachery.
Chilton jerked his chin across the room. “I take it you’ve seen your future father-in-law has company?”
Nick followed the gesture. The Marquess of Tennyson slapped the other man on the back. Then, lifting his arm, he motioned forward a lithe beauty carrying a silver tray. She sauntered over, hips swaying, with a full bottle of brandy. Setting down the decanter, she proceeded to pour the viscount a snifter full to the brim, and then leaned down to whisper something into his ear.
Waters angled back around, the two creatures on his lap momentarily forgotten as the serving woman brought the glass to his lips and held the crystal while he drank. A moment later, the viscount climbed to his feet and allowed himself to be tugged forward by the three lush beauties, stumbling over himself in his haste to leave.
Chilton followed Waters’ departure and then looked back to Nick. “There have been whispers about the gentleman in the past. He takes an inordinate delight in shaming and breaking young ladies. Has no compunction about bedding an innocent.” With his depravity and devotion to his wicked urges, Tennyson was a rake in every sense of the word.
Nick probed him with his stare.
“He’s tried with little success to bed La Belle Ferronniere.” God, how Nick despised that cold, unfeeling moniker handed to Justina by a cold, unfeeling Society. “As such, Tennyson has moved in a different direction to capture the lady.”
He followed Chilton’s focus over to the Viscount Waters. The snifter nearly cracked under the weight of Nick’s grip and he forced himself to loosen his hold. “Oh?” That single, meaningless utterance was all he could manage with fury licking at his senses.
“Waters owes him a vast sum.” Nick tamped down a curse. Desperation made men do foolish things. His own father was proof of that. With a contrasting calm, Chilton dropped his elbows on the table and, leaning forward, spoke in hushed tones. “According to my same source, Waters has worked out a…deal of sorts with Tennyson.”
Don’t ask. Tennyson’s plans are not my own. A potent surge of something dark and red, something that felt very much like jealousy, coiled tight in Nick’s belly like a serpent poised to strike. “What?” he gritted out, damning himself for caring.
Chilton settled back in his chair and in an infuriatingly cool manner, swirled the contents of his glass in a small circle. “He’ll bed her with no recompense of marriage expected.” His friend smiled wryly. “And Waters will be free to wed her off to another who doesn’t care for the absence of her virtue.”
Bile stung his throat. Having abandoned his plans for Justina, what happened to the lady from here did not matter to him. Or it shouldn’t. And yet, by God, the idea of her belonging to the notorious rake Tennyson in any way made him want to stalk over to the bastard like a feral beast and take him apart at the limbs.
Chilton shoved back his chair and, through his tumultuous musings, Nick glanced up. “See, if you simply let it all play out, the Barretts will be ruined through no effort on your part. Now, if you’ll excuse me? I’ve matters of business to see to.” Those matters of business invariably proved to be his half-siblings, bastard children of the Duke of Ravenscourt, that Chilton had taken under his wing, as though he were their true father. Siblings the other man had never failed, whereas Nick? He thrust aside thoughts of his sister. The other man finished his drink and set the glass down. “I merely thought I would try once more to deter you from bloodying your own hands.”
Nick inclined his head. Treated with condescension by the whole of Society for his birthright, the other man had more honor than all the members of the peerage combined. That honor, only further proven by his heroics at Waterloo, had seen him titled for it.
After Chilton had taken his leave, Nick returned his attention to the Marquess of Tennyson, now fully occupied by a golden-haired beauty on his lap. With her broad hips and generous breasts, she was of like form to Justina. Tennyson shoved his hand up the woman’s skirt, earning a squeal for his efforts, and he buried his face in the woman’s ample cleavage.
An image assaulted Nick. An image of Justina in all her glorious innocence spread wide with the marquess rutting between her legs. The drink trembled in his hand and he set it down, splashing amber droplets upon the table. His gaze fixed on the pair locked in an embrace, Nick strode forward. He stopped beside the table.
The beauty with heavily rouged cheeks and crimson lips noted Nick first. She offered him a slow, seductive smile. “You’ve company, my lord.” The marquess removed his attentions from the lady’s breasts.
The marquess glanced up and his cold eyes registered surprise. He pushed the woman off his lap and she knocked into the table. “Later, love,” the man murmured, swatting her hard on the buttocks. The sharp crack of that blow earned a gasp from the lady and she quickly rushed off to another table. With the young whore gone, Tennyson spread his arms wide. “Huntly, to what do I owe this pleasure?”
I
t did not escape Nick’s notice that the other man failed to rise. With a ducal arrogance Wellington himself would be hard-pressed to find fault with, he yanked out the vacant seat and claimed a chair. “I want Waters’ vowels,” he said when Tennyson raised his glass to his lips.
The marquess paused, his snifter halfway to his mouth. “Beg pardon?” he asked, dipping his eyebrows.
“What does the gentleman owe you?” Nick asked coolly, flicking a disgusted stare over him. “One thousand pounds? Two?”
Lord Tennyson looked back with shrewd eyes, finished his sip, and then set his glass down. “They aren’t for sale.” In short, it was the only power the man held over the viscount to bed Justina Barrett. When stripped away of that hold, the viscount no longer had use for him.
Nick leaned back in his seat and with slow, precise movements, tugged off his gloves. “Do you truly believe I cannot find out the amount owed?” he drawled, stuffing the pair inside his jacket.
The marquess ran his gaze searchingly over his face. “You’d own them so you can win the lady’s hand from Waters?” he asked, his question laden with suspicion.
“If I was determined to own the vowels to win the lady’s hand, I’d simply give the viscount the money as a settlement,” he said in bored tones. That only increased the lines furrowed in the perplexed marquess’ brow. “How much?” Nick repeated. “Three thousand?”
“Seven.”
Long ago, he had become a master of dissembling. Even so, the staggering amount held him momentarily speechless.
A Heart of a Duke Regency Collection : Volume 2--A Regency Bundle Page 127
