A Lord Rotheby's Holiday Bundle

by Catherine Gayle

  Bloody hell. He’d never felt so confined, so trapped, whilst out of doors. Perhaps he would toss himself into the Thames before they were through. Or maybe he’d toss Jonas, instead.

  Yes, now that he thought about it for a moment, most assuredly Jonas.

  “Ah, wonderful,” Jonas said. “Lord and Lady Tyndall and their daughter, Miss Tyndall, are headed our way on foot. Perhaps we should start with them.”

  “Perhaps we should gouge out our eyes with dull, rusty daggers,” Quin responded. “That might be equally as pleasant.”

  “Coward.”

  “Degenerate.”

  But Jonas afforded him no opportunity to hesitate. He lifted his hand and called, “Lord and Lady Tyndall. Lovely day today, is it not? And how delightful to see you out as well, Miss Tyndall.”

  The baronet rode to the family’s side before Quin had a chance to stop him, leaving Quin with no choice but to join them or look the part of the cad. Which, of course, he was, but he was supposed to be mending his ways.

  He had half a heart to toss his grandfather into the Thames now, instead of anyone else. Then he could just inherit and be done with it. Devilish old codger.

  So he rode over to the oh-so-delightful Tyndall family and joined his friend.

  “Have you all had the pleasure of meeting my good friend, Lord Quinton? He has finally come in from the country to give life in Town a try.”

  Tyndall seemed interested and started to speak, but his wife shook her head furiously at him with a forbidding glare in her eyes. “I believe,” she said, “we must be on our way, Sir Jonas.” She tugged on the arms of both her husband and her daughter, whispering loudly to her husband, “Lord Quinton is the one. We must not associate ourselves with him.” They walked at a much faster pace than their previous stroll and were out of earshot within moments.

  “I told you this was a bad idea.” Quin watched the trio move along the Serpentine and stop at another group of walkers. They talked for a moment and then turned and pointed in his direction. The second group changed directions and walked away with the Tyndalls. “Are you ready to give up on this bag of moonshine yet? We need another plan. This will never work.”

  Jonas spurred his horse forward. “Not yet. We’ve only talked to one family! There are easily a dozen more groups we can try. If we stay long enough, the park will be full of fashionable opportunities.”

  “But if they won’t even let me speak…”

  “We’ll worry about that when we come to it.” Jonas had spotted another group, this one with two gentlemen and two ladies who were heading for them.

  “We’ve already come to it!” Blast. He should turn around. He ought to go back to Jonas’s bachelor lodgings and prepare himself for that evening, and then return to his original plan. It would work. Eventually. Somehow, he would stumble upon a young lady desperate enough to be married that she would marry even him. She had to exist. He merely had to find her. Weren’t balls the most likely place for a young lady to be in search of a husband?

  The sound of galloping horses and out of control carriages barreled down on him from behind. Quin had only just leapt to the side and out of the way before they were upon him: two curricles, each carrying a gentleman and a lady, racing along the path, headed for Rotten Row. He had to stop himself from cursing them for their audacity.

  One of the ladies screamed and grabbed hold of her bonnet. A book flew out of the curricle and landed only a few feet from him. Up ahead, parasols and bonnets and top hats flew out behind the two vehicles, landing in a decidedly haphazard fashion as they went.

  Quin dismounted to collect the book so he could return it to its owner, even if she did pose a dangerous risk to society by racing at full speed through a park without regard for the other people who might happen to be there. Out of curiosity, he flipped through the pages to see what she’d been reading. But this was no printed book—it was her journal.

  Before I could react in any way, Lord Quinton’s lips fell upon mine, soft and supple and wantonly delectable.

  Damnation!

  One of those chits had been writing about him. And not writing about how fiendish he was, or what a cur he was, or any other reasonable thing for a young lady of good ton to believe of him. But she was writing about kissing him. And liking it. Which was no surprise to him, but seemed it might be a bit of a surprise to her.

  He was fairly certain he hadn’t kissed either of them. Not yet, at least.

  But he’d be damned if that remained the way of things.

  “What have you there, Quin?” Jonas asked as he returned. “A book? I never took you for the reading sort.”

  “I’m not. Or I wasn’t until now.” His life was on the verge of a momentous change. He could feel it. Granted, part of that change included marriage, but that couldn’t be avoided any longer.

  At least that marriage would be to someone who might keep him interested. Because how could a woman who wrote such a thing about him be uninteresting?

  He felt invigorated. Alive.

  Quin had just discovered his bride. Now he simply had to discover her identity and convince her to marry him.

  That couldn’t be too difficult.

  ~ * ~

  “Aurora. There couldn’t possibly be very many Auroras to choose from.” Quin sat at a table at White’s with Jonas, reading through the journal he’d found at Hyde Park.

  “I know of only one in the beau monde. But keep your voice down. You’ll ruin her before you even meet her, if anyone hears.”

  Only one. Excellent. “She’s the one.”

  “What the hell are you after? How can you know she’s the one? You’ve never met her. You know nothing about her.” Jonas threw up his hands in disgust. “All you have is this…this…book that she’s written.”

  “Precisely. I have this book in which she’s written a cornucopia of brazen and lascivious ideas. About me. And her. About us. That means she already thinks there is an us.” He couldn’t have dreamed up an idea more perfect if he’d tried. “Listen to this: ‘Lord Quinton pulled me into another embrace and I felt my body come alive. The energy between us thrummed with an electricity I never knew existed. I looked up into his eyes, beckoning, begging. Before I could speak the words to ask, his lips crushed down against my own again, far more insistently than before.’ She’s practically begging me to come and ravish her. How can I deny the minx the joys of my infinite skill in that area?” He turned to another page. “And here! Here she writes of us marrying.”

  Jonas glared at him across the table and placed a finger over his lips. “Be quiet. You can’t know that it is really about you. Be realistic, Quin. She could just have an overactive imagination.”

  Blasphemy. “What other Lord Quinton would it be about, hmm? What other Lord Quinton is there with long, sun-kissed hair, who is clad in all black and is dashing and daring enough to kiss a young lady so boldly?” He waited a half a second for Jonas to answer him, but no more. “None! Besides, look through here at these other stories. Granted, none are nearly so exciting as the one she wrote about me, but they certainly are here.” He flipped through the pages until he found the one he was looking for. “Like this one, about Lord Vickery. Would her description of him be accurate? ‘More round than tall, more on his head than in it, more bleak than London fog in November.’”

  “Well, yes, but”

  “But nothing!” Quin flipped back a few more pages. “Try this one, about Lord Padbury. ‘So portly he must have filled his pockets with cakes and tarts, because no man could possibly take up such a great amount of space without such assistance.’ How accurate is that assessment?” As his certainty about this Aurora grew stronger, so did his voice.

  Jonas shook his head in defeat. “Entirely accurate.”

  “Then how, if these other gentlemen are portrayed as they actually are in real life, might this Lord Quinton be anyone but me?” He raised an eyebrow at his friend. “Precisely. He cannot. So, who is this Aurora? Tell me what you know.”r />
  “What I know is on the side of meager. Her name is Aurora Hyatt. Her father is Viscount Hyatt. She’s been on the marriage mart for a number of Seasons. I seem to recall a wedding announcement at one point years ago, but I believe her betrothed came to an untimely end before such an occurrence came to pass.”

  A prior engagement he could handle. And if she had been on the hunt for a replacement for a dead fiancé for years, surely she was close to the point of desperation. Precisely what he needed. “So no scandals? Nothing Rotheby could use to disqualify her as a potential match?”

  “I believe there might have been some minor controversy over her mother. She was not born of the ton, if memory serves—but from somewhere exotic.”

  Exotic? That sounded promising.

  “But her father has always had an upstanding reputation. Rotheby could use the very journal you’re holding in your hands, though. That bit of bound parchment is enough scandal to keep the gossips in ceaseless supply for months.”

  Quin waved a hand through the air. “He can’t use it if he doesn’t know of its existence. Surely, no one knows of it but the two of us and Miss Hyatt. I can’t imagine any young lady in hopes of finding a reputable match would reveal its contents to anyone else, in fear of the damage it would cause to her reputation. She can’t announce it as missing without facing the possibility of its discovery.”

  “Someone else will know if you don’t keep your voice down.”

  Blast. He just couldn’t quite seem to contain his enthusiasm. The more he thought about it, the more certain he was. This Aurora Hyatt was exactly the miss he needed to convince to marry him. She already thought herself in love with him, the silly minx. And to top it all off, she was a scandal waiting to happen.

  A scandal waiting for him to play his part and rescue her from her own folly.

  As long as he did just that, Rotheby would be entirely unable to find any fault with her—a young society miss, daughter of a viscount, clearly (based upon her writing) well educated, if just a mite on the opinionated side of things. Quin would have to work on that last part. But there should be plenty of time for her to learn her new position.

  Now he just needed to meet her. “Find out what ball she’ll attend tonight, Jonas. It’s time I meet my bride.”

  Chapter Four

  1 April, 1811

  I am no longer entirely certain I am still alive. There appears to be some feeling in my extremities, yet my heart has gone utterly and completely numb. I cannot believe I was so foolish as to lose my journal. I can only hope that Rebecca is right and it is floating away down the Serpentine even as we speak. At least then, even if someone were to find it, the ink would have smeared. Then no one would be able to read the things I’ve written. No one would know that I called Lord Endicott a bloated old toad with the warts to prove it. Except Endicott himself, of course. But he is far too gentlemanly to ever reveal such a thing. If only I were too ladylike to have refrained from voicing such a thing.

  ~From the journal of Miss Aurora Hyatt

  Seething was hardly a forceful enough term to describe Lord Griffin Seabrook’s mood as he left White’s that afternoon. Furious might be more apt. Or murderous—aye, that term held particular appeal.

  Time Quinton meet his bride, indeed.

  Griffin had heard the word spreading through the ton of Lord Quinton’s arrival in Town, almost always accompanied by descriptions of his vulgar attire, his indiscreet flirtations, his lewd behaviors. He’d done his best to protect Phoebe from the news, lest she again suffer shame and degradation.

  It was enough to make a gentleman either violently ill or violently enraged.

  Particularly when the gentleman in question happened to be an older brother of Quinton’s true bride.

  The bastard had a lot of nerve.

  He even had the audacity to speak of his plan, of his secret, sitting out in the open in the middle of White’s. And to make matters worse, he hadn’t bothered to keep his voice down, despite repeated reminders from his companion. Griffin half expected the bastard to place a bet in the books on how soon he could convince Miss Hyatt to capitulate and agree to his dastardly plot.

  He had to wonder about the why of it all. Not why this pitiable Miss Hyatt seemed so preoccupied with the monster, per se, seeing as how Griffin’s own sister had once fallen into Quinton’s trap. But more the why on Quinton’s end: why the need to marry, and particularly, why the need to do so in such a rush?

  But one thing was certain—he would not suffer Quinton’s success. He would not sit idly by and watch the lecher ruin another young lady. He would not bite his tongue and let the plans in motion play out.

  He turned down Piccadilly from St. James Street, thankful for the time and space to stretch his legs while he ruminated over his options.

  Griffin could take the matter straight to his father, the Marquess of Laughton, and let him deal with it. But Father already had enough to deal with at the moment, between the departure of his longstanding mistress and the impending arrival of yet another by-blow.

  He could confront Quinton about his treachery. Call him out. Settle the score once and for all—something he’d been itching to do now for years, but had been unable to do with the cowardly scoundrel on the Continent—but there remained the slight problem of the illegality of dueling, and the rather more pronounced problem of Quinton’s esteemed marksmanship.

  Griffin could take the more backhanded approach of enlightening the gossips as to Miss Hyatt’s journal and its contents. But in so doing, he would be lowering himself to Quinton’s standards—permanently and irrevocably ruining a young lady. Such an approach might also have unintended consequences, such as merely rushing the two into marriage. No, that method was clearly out. None of those options seemed to fulfill Griffin’s purpose.

  He needed something else. Something better suited to the problem at hand.

  Quinton could not get away with this.

  Before he had come up with a solution to the problem, Griffin arrived at his bachelor lodgings. Blast, he needed an idea.

  Perhaps he could… No, Griffin had no acquaintance with Miss Hyatt. He could not take such liberties as paying her a call to explain the situation. But wouldn’t allowing Quinton to carry out his devious plan be the more egregious sin?

  Griffin changed directions. He suddenly felt a need to visit a new destination.

  Cavendish Square.

  ~ * ~

  “Drawn and quartered. That’s what Father will do to me.” Aurora threw herself face down on her bed.

  “It might not be so bad as all that. He could just strap you to the rack for a while.”

  Aurora turned her head to frown at her friend. What a dismal attempt to cheer her mood! Rebecca needed to try harder with the next one. This was, after all, a disaster of momentous proportion.

  “It is your own fault, after all. Why on earth would you have thought it a good idea to bring your journal with you?” Rebecca plopped down beside her on the bed. “You couldn’t very well write in it while we were out. I daresay you would never have read to Lord Norcutt from it.”

  “Oh, dear good Lord, no.” She shivered at the thought of reading such a thing aloud to a gentleman. “I was writing in it when Norcutt arrived, and…well, somehow I ended up bringing it along instead of stashing it upstairs in my chamber. And since I had it with me, I thought perhaps you and I would have a few moments to ourselves, and that you could read a bit from it.”

  After all that had come to pass, even Aurora recognized her excuse sounded at the very least ludicrous, if not altogether naïve. But even that couldn’t excuse Rebecca’s lack of support. Certainly not now, when she needed it most.

  “I’ve never heard anything so preposterous in my life. I know you, Aurora, and I know how your mind works.” Rebecca’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “I can clearly imagine the delightful and devious things you wrote. And you know I would never take such a chance as to read something like that anywhere but in the privacy of
this very chamber. And speaking of that…would you care to share any of it with me? From memory, of course, since your sinful words are currently sinking to the bottom of the Serpentine.”

  Aurora scowled. She prepared to deliver a scathing retort—something along the lines of since you find it prudent to tease me in my distress, I shall find it prudent to withhold such delightful morsels in future (oh, dear—that seemed more wounded and pathetic than scathing and retort-like, even to Aurora’s sensibilities)—only to change her mind mid-thought when a knock sounded at the door. “Enter.”

  One of the downstairs maids moved inside the doorway, holding out a silver salver with a calling card upon it. “You have a visitor, miss.”

  Of course she did. Whoever it was had inconsiderate timing, blast them, even if it was the middle of the afternoon. Aurora took the card and frowned. Lord Griffin Seabrook. The name was only slightly familiar; she was certain she had no acquaintance with him.

  “Please inform Lord Griffin I am out from the house, Eugenia.”

  The maid bobbed a curtsy and was on her way. Once the door closed firmly behind her, Aurora turned back to Rebecca. “Well, I suppose I could recall a few details. Just last night, I wrote our wedding. You may go ahead and refer to me as Lady Quinton now, if you like. I think that should be rather fitting.”

  Thinking about the lovely tidbits written in her journal felt decidedly better than thinking of her impending torture and death when her father discovered her blunder.

  Rebecca’s eyes widened. “And the wedding night?” She leaned in across the bed, taking one of Aurora’s hands into her own.

  And yet another knock sounded at the door.

  “Blast. Enter!”