His Wicked Reputation

by Madeline Hunter

“To see you swing,” Ives said.

  “I can’t blame him. I did fuck his wife. She really likes to s—”

  “Yes, we know,” Ives said.

  Lance wandered away, toward the hazard table.

  Ives looked at Gareth. “Damn, all this talk of the lady’s predilections has me hard as an iron rod. Did you lie to draw the fire, or am I the only brother who did not get his fair share, as you put it?”

  Gareth shrugged, and followed Lance.

  * * *

  Eva handed her shopping basket to the footman, who set it aside. Then she followed him into a pretty drawing room decorated in the incongruous styles of the two women who lived in this fine house. Jeweled tones mixed with pastels, and paisleys with florals. Pretty landscapes decorated the walls, right next to somewhat odd images reminiscent of Mr. Blake’s illustrations.

  The sisters Neville received her from their respective perches. Ophelia sat in a diminutive upholstered rose-hued chair. Light from the window turned her blond hair into a haze, making it look like the pale ethereal seed head of a dandelion waiting for a strong breeze or breath. Jasmine lounged on a divan, her long curls following the same hills and valleys as her shapeless silk robe.

  They had sent a letter yesterday, inviting her to call on them. They never had before. She assumed they wanted to discuss the same topic she had broached outside Mr. Duran’s shop, only in the privacy of their home.

  Tea was served. Eva sipped slowly, enjoying the luxury. She never drank tea. Good tea was far too expensive, and cheap tea tasted like the adulterated bad bargain it was.

  “We are so happy you have called,” Ophelia said. “We would have called on you, but your sister said you prefer if people do not.”

  “As if we care how many chairs there are,” Jasmine intoned. “Life is what it is. There is no shame in a woman’s poverty, especially since it is almost never that woman’s fault.”

  “How understanding of you,” Eva said. “All the same, Rebecca thinks it would prove awkward to ask guests to stand the whole time.”

  “She is correct on that, Jasmine. You must admit it.”

  Jasmine nodded, grudgingly.

  “As for why we would have called,” Ophelia continued. “One reason would be to know you better. We have often commented that it was too bad you never came with Rebecca, so we could make your better acquaintance. While your brother was ill, it was understandable, of course, but since then—”

  “You should be out and about more, and not only to shop,” Jasmine interrupted. “You never attend assemblies or stroll along the lake. You took on some habits while you cared for him that you should endeavor to break now that your year of mourning is over.”

  “I do not think Miss Russell needs our advice, sister.” Ophelia subtly rolled her eyes in Eva’s direction. “Even if she may understand it is only your good heart that causes you to offer it.”

  Eva just smiled.

  “We also wanted to speak to you about something else,” Ophelia said.

  “Since you spoke so frankly with us the other day on the lane, we assumed you would not mind our doing the same in turn,” Jasmine inserted.

  “I can hardly object, as you so neatly point out. Pray tell, what do you feel obligated to say?”

  “I hope you know that we speak and act as friends,” Ophelia said.

  “Of course. With good hearts, as you said.”

  Jasmine righted herself on the divan. Her exotic robe made her appear like some foreign oracle. “We have friends in London. Old friends. Good friends. We wrote to them, to learn what we could about him.”

  “Him?”

  “Mr. Fitzallen. Gareth Fizallen,” Ophelia said. “Did you know he is the bastard of the Duke of Aylesbury? The third duke, of course.”

  “His mother was the butler’s daughter. Aylesbury made her his mistress. Kept her for years. Decades. Until he died,” Jasmine said.

  “Such arrangements are not uncommon among the nobility,” Eva said, lest the sisters think she was so provincial as to be shocked by the revelations. “Nor is a man responsible for his own birth, I think you will agree.”

  Jasmine looked at her sister meaningfully. Ophelia appeared chagrined.

  “I told you,” Jasmine said. “See how she defends him.”

  “Only because I, too, strive to have a good heart,” Eva said.

  Jasmine speared her with a knowing glare. “See here. Your sister said he called at your house. Brought a little gift. Erasmus says he has asked about your brother’s illness and other things related to your family’s history.”

  “Other things,” Ophelia echoed quietly.

  “So we wrote to our friends to see what he was.”

  “And learned he was a bastard. I already knew that. He told me at once. It should not matter to anyone, but perhaps my heart is too good if I think so.”

  Jasmine threw up her hands. “Tell her, Ophelia. Perhaps she will hear it better if it comes from you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  Ophelia looked pained. “We do not expect you to care that he is a bastard. However, it is his character that gave us pause. It is not the best. He has a reputation that we thought you should know about, lest you . . . that is, so he does not . . .”

  “Seduce and abandon,” Jasmine boomed. “Tell lies, take advantage, and bring shame upon your family.”

  Her voice rang through the drawing room. Eva looked to be sure the windows were closed.

  “He is reputed to be very wicked,” Ophelia said. “Most skilled in his seductions. Wives, widows, women of maturity like yourself—”

  “Mostly wives,” Jasmine said. “But our friends say he considers any female over twenty-three fair game, and some suspect he has even deflowered innocent girls.” She lowered her voice, as if confiding a secret. “We are told that he employs certain exotic techniques that leave women enthralled, even addled, and unable to give him up. Some of the highest-born ladies, names you would know, have sought to keep him closer than is wise. As a young man right out of university he had a long affair with one lady, who herself has a reputation for romantic excess. The relationship became notorious. She kept him like a pet and spent a small fortune on him.”

  “Perhaps she corrupted him,” Ophelia offered. “His current character would not be his fault, then. Not entirely.”

  “Oh, sister, sister, sister. You will always look for excuses for the wicked. It does you no credit.”

  “That is not true. You always see the worst and I do not, that is all.”

  Eva cleared her throat to draw their attention, before she witnessed a long exchange of bickering. “I am grateful, of course, that you chose to share this with me. I need to reassure you that Mr. Fitzallen has no such interest in me. I am the last woman to turn such a man’s head, even for a few hours. I think we can all agree that while he may someday be wicked with a lady in Langdon’s End, it will not be me.”

  They both looked at her in a peculiar way. Then at each other. Then at her.

  “It goes without saying that we are not concerned about you,” Jasmine said.

  “It is Rebecca whom we fear will attract his wickedness.”

  Of course. They worried for beautiful Rebecca. It was me he almost kissed. He gave that little gift to me. I am the one he might seduce and abandon. She came close to saying it. Shouting it. Except she knew the sisters were correct. She was in no danger. None at all.

  On reflection—much reflection—she had concluded she had been mistaken and he had not almost kissed her. For one thing, from the sound of things, Gareth did not almost kiss women. Far from it.

  “You are so good to be concerned for my sister. I am truly touched. If it gives you any peace, let me say that he barely looked at her when he visited.”

  “That is a common strategy of such men. The question is whether she looked at him,” Jasmine said.

  “How could she not? Of course she was impressed. He is very handsome. However, after he left, I asked her what she thought of him.
Her response will amuse you. She said he was beautiful, but old.”

  “He can’t be more than thirty years,” Ophelia said. “Perhaps even a few years younger.”

  “To a girl her age, thirty is ancient. It was when I was eighteen.” Rebecca’s dismissal of Gareth as too old had been a mixed blessing. While she was glad Rebecca would not form a tendre for him, finding her sister a husband would be much harder if she persisted in thinking thirty years was old.

  Ophelia looked relieved. Jasmine appeared half-appeased.

  “You must keep an eye on her, all the same,” Jasmine said. “Who knows what wily plans he might have. He has no fortune, so if the worst happens she will hardly be better off if he does the right thing, which his reputation suggests he will not. Other than a modest income from the duke, and that pile of stone he now calls Albany Lodge, he has nothing. As a bastard, he never will.”

  Eva stood. “I will be very cautious and make sure Rebecca does not get enthralled or addled, I promise. Now, I must return to her. I have been gone overlong.”

  She stepped out of the house, not knowing whether to be insulted or amused. The sisters Neville had not told her anything she had not already surmised about Gareth. Of far more interest had been the reference to exotic techniques. She wondered what in the world that meant, and why they apparently left women begging for more.

  On her way home, she remembered the errands that had sent her to town in the first place. She fished into her basket for a letter that had come. She had picked it up while posting one of her own.

  Sarah had written. She opened the letter, hoping she could give Rebecca good news. She made a little jump of joy after she read the first sentence.

  Sarah had invited them to visit for a few days when next they went to Birmingham.

  * * *

  Eva tapped her fingertips against the gray-blue of the fountain, checking to see how tacky the oil paint remained. If she packed it carefully, perhaps it could make the trip to Birmingham along with the others. She would have to tell Mr. Stevenson to hang it immediately, however.

  She had spent the last ten days finishing this painting, and the dress, and attempting to create miracles of improvements on other garments. Right now Rebecca sewed by the light of the big window, attaching some new trimmings to an old pelisse. The goal—the hope—was to appear not nearly as out of date as the age of those garments might indicate.

  She lifted the painting she had copied. Wrapped again in its burlap, she rested its weight on her hip. “I am going now. I should be back in an hour or so.”

  Rebecca looked up. “Can it not wait until we return from our journey? I had hoped to have your help with this.”

  “He is gone now and may have returned by then. Best if this resides in its attic when we leave town.”

  “I doubt he will miss it if it is never returned. You said that attic is hard to find. And should he discover it and somehow know something is missing, he is not likely to think you took it what with so much else missing too.”

  “It is a painting of some value, Rebecca. A few chairs that would probably end up as a vagrant’s firewood are one thing. A Gainsborough painting is another. Honesty decrees I return it.”

  “Go then. I will begin to warm the soup if you are not back soon.”

  Eva let herself out of the house and strode down the drive to the lane. Albany Lodge sat no more than fifteen minutes north of their house. She reached the road that connected the two properties, and soon passed the crossroads with the other road that took one to Langdon’s End.

  She rounded the bend and Albany Lodge jumped into view. It appeared no different from the past. Nothing indicated someone now inhabited it and that repairs were under way.

  He would be gone at least a fortnight, Gareth had said. Erasmus and Harold had not been working at the property during its master’s absence. She trusted no one would be about this afternoon and see her complete her mission.

  Tacking for horses, a jumble of cutlery, and an assortment of jars and crockery bowls decorated the lodge’s portico floor when she arrived at the lodge. The citizens of Langdon’s End had done as she now did, and taken advantage of Gareth’s absence to return more of the items borrowed over the years. This batch had perhaps been lured out of its temporary lodgings by the vicar’s sermon on Sunday, in which he preached on the commandment not to steal.

  Gareth’s habitation proved more obvious inside than out. Refuse and dust had disappeared. A few items of furniture gave the reception hall a spare but lived-in appearance. Someone had even cleaned the fireplace and scrubbed the hearthstones. She looked in the library and saw similar improvements.

  The painting grew heavy in her arms. Carrying it up the stairs proved a chore. She soldiered on, up to the servant quarters then down to a small door tucked to the side at the end of the corridor. She had missed this access to the upper attics her first few times exploring the empty house. When she finally found it and ventured above, the contents had amazed her.

  She clutched the painting firmly and maneuvered the narrow stairs into the dusty, warm space right under the roof of one of the stone wings to the house. Little light penetrated because it had only one window, which was small and obscured by the deep eaves of the roof. It would be easy to miss the forms against the walls, covered by blankets. She almost had.

  She set down her painting, carefully positioning it so it stood in front of a large, flat surface hidden by a blanket. She slid the blanket up. A bit of light caught the bright colors of tulips and glass on the canvas surface, rendered with such realism as to invite one to touch the different textures. The painting was Dutch, she was sure, and probably from the seventeenth century. She had been tempted to try and copy it, but it was just large enough to be impossible to carry home.

  She let the blanket drop so that it covered the three little boys and the fountain, now returned to their stack of paintings. She looked down the wall at other small canvases that she would not be able to borrow now that Gareth had moved into the house.

  He had not found this attic yet, but eventually he would. Then he would most likely move the paintings back to the walls below, from where they had no doubt been taken when the house was closed up after the last time the duke visited.

  Even if he never found them, she could hardly cart one out right under his nose, or return it the same way.

  Could she?

  She walked to the final stack of paintings and lifted the blanket. She had intended to borrow the ones here. Without them, she was not sure how she and Rebecca would live once the money from the current group was spent. It might be impossible to build new lives, too, let alone have the fun she so proudly informed Gareth she intended to have.

  If Gareth made journeys like this one with any kind of frequency, and if she did not tell him about the attic, might she on occasion still ply her copyist trade and earn a few shillings?

  She lifted the front painting, a small landscape with peasants in front and a ruined castle in the background. She thought the subject would appeal to many of Mr. Stevenson’s patrons.

  Her conscience debated with her practicality over the temptation to leave with a bundle just as she had arrived. While she concentrated on her conflicting inclinations, an intuitive awareness crept into her mind.

  She froze and listened. Nothing. And yet—she sensed she was no longer alone in the house.

  Perhaps Erasmus had come by, or Harold. Should they see her leaving, she expected she could come up with a passable excuse. All the same her heart thudded and alarm sharpened her senses. She set down the painting, tiptoed to the attic’s top stair, and listened again. More silence.

  She tried to tell herself she was being a goose, but she still felt someone’s presence. Not up on the servant’s level, but below somewhere. She felt more than heard footsteps.

  What if it was not Erasmus or Harold, or even someone from the town? What if a thief who knew the house had returned, unaware that it now was inhabited? What if one of those strange
rs who seemed to always be around had entered? She did not want to come face-to-face with such a man.

  She also did not want to get trapped up in this attic.

  Listening hard, sure she was wrong but knowing she was right, she descended the stairs as quietly as possible. She pulled the door closed behind her, and aimed for the servants’ stairs to the lower levels.

  By the time she reached the first storey, she convinced herself she had conjured up ghosts out of thin air. All the same she slipped quickly past the doors to the main staircase, making as little noise as possible.

  Light poured over the threshold of the door closest to the stairs. She tried to recall the house’s arrangement. That door led to a bedchamber, like most of the rooms up here, but it had not been a big one or very grand, as she remembered. It had been emptied of everything years ago.

  All the same she attempted silence while she approached. She cautiously peered around the doorjamb.

  Her memory had failed her. This was not a minor bedchamber. It was the entrance to a large dressing room. Worse, the owner of the house now occupied it.

  And he was naked.

  Gareth stood with his back to her, without a stitch of clothing on. He appeared to be preparing to dress. Garments waited on a chair nearby, and he worked at unfolding a shirt. Water pools glistened on the floor near the washstand.

  Every inch of her body tensed and demanded she leave, fast, and make her escape. Her mind refused to listen. She just stared with breathless fascination.

  She had seen her brother naked, of course. Even as an adult, since she had taken care of him. But by then he was wasted and thin and nothing like this. This man was in his prime, with tense, broad shoulders and tight skin and muscles and hard, round swells for his bottom. She found that part especially compelling, although she looked hard at his legs.

  He set aside the shirt, and reached for trousers. Suddenly his hand froze a few inches above the garments. Awareness flexed through him like a ripple. His profile hardened into dangerous planes and his mouth into an uncompromising line. His other hand stretched toward the dressing table.

  Alarmed, she turned and scurried back the way she had come, to the servant stairs. She prayed the garden door below would be unlocked.