Earl of Wainthorpe

by Cameron, Collette

  His pretty relative though?

  Well, she had been unexpected. And Pierce loathed being on the receiving end of surprises.

  His man would be explaining that glaring—lovely—oversight on the morrow.

  Pierce had no interest in the baron’s estates, nor in his few head of livestock. Nonetheless, he intended to leave the man with nothing. Not even a pot to piss in, as Pierce’s former sailor-turned-manservant, Popplewell, was wont to quote.

  Failure to honor his gambling debts meant complete disgrace for Fairfax. At present, he hovered on Polite Society’s most outer fringes. A scandal would tip him over that fragile edge into ignominy. He would be blacklisted from the beau monde’s elite assemblies he so admired, unable to purchase something as economical as a piece of straw on credit.

  Not a qualm or jot of hesitation muddled Pierce’s resolve.

  The baron deserved every misfortune directed his way.

  What about his cousin, Pritam, my son? She’s done you no harm.

  Pierce could almost hear his gentle mother’s musical voice chastising him for his cruelty.

  It mattered not. He craved justice.

  For her.

  For the small child who held his dying mother in his skinny arms, begging her not to leave him. For his father who perished of fever scarcely two short months later, brought on by a broken heart. For his three older half-sisters, also left parentless, though they were well into their late teens and early twenties when Father passed.

  Spearing the woman a glance, Pierce’s gaze tangled with hers, entreaty fairly radiating from her unusual umber colored eyes. Eyes a shade lighter than the abundant auburn lashes framing them and the shiny tresses pulled back from her forehead and pinned into a rather severe knot for someone so young. Not a traditional beauty; nonetheless, her features were striking, fine-boned, and compelled him to indulge in a lingering look.

  Which caused the queerest surge behind his ribs.

  It was her almond-shaped, cinnamon eyes.

  Steady and assessing, filled with lively intelligence and a hint of something almost exotic. Wild. Untamed even.

  Her gown, however, did nothing for her creamy complexion. A revolting hue somewhere between a Pompeian deep red and spoiled salmon, the frock was an ill-fitting travesty of questionable origin. That seamstress ought not to touch a needle again. Ever.

  Something very near compassion dared to try to well within his breast. He broke eye contact and soundly mashed the emotion flat as a newssheet whilst laying his cards face down atop the table.

  She was Fairfax’s kin.

  He’d brought this undoing upon her, not Pierce.

  “Am I to assume your hesitation means no, Fairfax?” Pierce angled to sweep the winnings to his side of the small table.

  “Hold there. No need for haste.” Fairfax made a curt gesture, a flicker of unease drawing his beetle brows tight. His stubby tongue appeared at the corner of his mouth once again, and he tore his lustful gaze from the ante. “You’ll accept my marker, of course?”

  The poorest church’s alms box held more coins than the baron’s shallow pockets.

  “Guaranteeing what, precisely? ’Tis well known, you’re already in dun territory.” Idly fingering a token, Pierce’s blasted attention gravitated to the coppery-headed cousin once more.

  Her gaze inquisitive, she angled her head, the slightest crease pulling her inner brows together over her little button of a nose.

  Damn.

  Slight slip there, mentioning Fairfax’s financial status, and she honed in on it with swift shrewdness. Wouldn’t do to reveal too much. The baron might get suspicious, which could lead to a case of nerves and withdrawing from the game.

  The moment passed, and Fairfax didn’t seem to notice, although a troubled frown still lined his cousin’s pretty face.

  “Your vowels aren’t worth the foolscap you’ve written them on, Fairfax.” Triumph tunneled through Pierce’s blood as the baron’s countenance flushed claret red, the veins standing out on his nose and forehead, a convoluted map of despair.

  The cousin’s expression remained a bland alabaster mask, but she couldn’t silence her gaze. With each slow sweep of her lashes, she denounced Pierce and Fairfax. Something else gleamed in those captivating eyes, too.

  Pierce shook his head, his smile tight and taunting. “No, I’m afraid I must insist on something more substantial. Something tangible. Something I can lay my hands on other than a slip of useless paper.”

  Fairfax puffed out his cheeks and exhaled. “Fine. Fine then.” With a jerk of his sausage-like finger, he signaled a footman for foolscap and ink. “I shall make a sport of Elmswood Parke. It’s not entailed.”

  Another gasp, this one distraught and feminine, rent the air. The cousin, her hands clasped before her, her face ashen, shook her head. An unexpectedly wild, nutmeg-hued strand sprang loose of its tight confines and teased the delicate hollow where her ear and neck joined.

  Unanticipated desire sluiced through Pierce, and he was flabbergasted to realize he envied the jaunty curl. He longed to place his lips atop the sensitive spot and see if her skin was as satiny as it appeared. To discover what intriguing scent she wore, if any.

  Those unwarranted ponderings earned her a speculative look.

  Innocents did not typically appeal to him. Redheads didn’t usually either.

  “Bertram. Please, you cannot stake my—our home,” she implored, touching his shoulder and revealing the neatly mended tips of her worn gloves. “If you should lose…”

  She had experienced want and deprivation. Pierce would bet his prized, matched bays on it. Yet she fairly glowed with poise, not a hint of inferiority bowing her head or shoulders as she implored the baron.

  Pierce felt acute mortification on her behalf. A first for him, and by thunder, he didn’t like it by half.

  With a half-oath, half-growl, Fairfax rounded on her, his protruding belly jostling the table. “I can, and I shall. Know your place, Bianca Salisbury.”

  “I assure you, I am well aware of my station.” Her fisted clasp upon her fan suggested she fought the urge to thwack her cousin upon his balding pate. “And if I were not, your almost daily admonitions would ensure that I did not ever forget.”

  Another wave of empathy for her plight engulfed Pierce.

  “Impudent chit. I can turn you out. Just like that, poor relation or not.” Fairfax snapped his fingers, and she crimped her mouth tighter, though her eyes railed her outrage.

  Monumental arse, airing Miss Salisbury’s reduced status publically like that.

  “And do not think I shan’t,” Fairfax said before seizing his brandy glass and gulping the remains.

  Pembroke swore beneath his breath and gave the girl a compassionate smile. He adored nothing better than rescuing a damsel in distress. Well, truth to tell, he liked bedding them more, but not proper young women of station. They expected marriage and Pembroke had an aversion to the state.

  A movement behind the baron drew Pierce’s attention.

  Arms crossed, and leaning one shoulder against the silk covered wall, Victor, the Duke of Sutcliffe scowled his displeasure. Because of Vic’s raven hair, swarthy coloring, and unusual height, people often mistook him and Pierce as relatives.

  Connected to Pierce’s three older half-sisters—the darling, meddlesome trio—on their mother’s side, Vic was the closest thing to a brother Pierce could claim. Besides the brethren of the earls’ club, of course.

  A few short strokes later, Fairfax placed the still damp I.O.U. in the middle of the table.

  Her face a composed mask of porcelain perfection and her pretty mouth a narrow, disapproving rose-tinted ribbon, Miss Salisbury glared daggers at Pierce. Gone was the supplication, replaced by accusation and condemnation.

  What did she expect him to do?

  Cede to Fairfax?

  It wasn’t done. Surely she understood that.

  Chin notched higher yet, and shoulders rigid enough to crack bricks on,
she stepped away from her cousin. With majestic grace—and a slight limp?—she retreated to a gold brocade upholstered bench along the wall a few feet from Vic. As if she could not abide watching the game played out, but couldn’t bear to leave either. Spine sword-straight and every bit as inflexible, she sank gracefully onto the cushion and presented her profile.

  Again, that dastardly tender feeling bubbled behind Pierce’s ribs, and once more he squelched it. He couldn’t harbor empathy for her and still purpose to crush Fairfax. Such double-mindedness would not do at all.

  She complicated matters, and Pierce did not like complications.

  Drumming his fingertips atop his cards, he cocked his head, as if considering Fairfax’s offer, then reached inside his coat and withdrew a stack of notes.

  “I’ll raise you another twenty thousand.”

  Except for the purplish veins lacing his nose, the color drained from Fairfax’s face, leaving him pallid as death. Fumbling about, he fished his less than pristine handkerchief from his pocket, then mopped his forehead and upper lip. His frenzied gaze swung around the room, sweeping past his cousin, and then jerked back to rest upon her.

  His bulgy eyes rounded farther and farther, until they dominated his face.

  The candlelight accenting her russet hair, she met his gaze head-on, denunciation fairly sparking in her luminous eyes.

  Cunning deepened the grooves bracketing Fairfax’s mouth.

  “By Jove.” He flailed his soiled kerchief. “I shall wager the gel, too.”

  Pierce almost put his pointer finger in his ear and shook his head to make sure he had heard correctly.

  The baron just said he would stake his cousin, had he not?

  Poor wretched girl.

  Slowly filling his lungs with air, Pierce peaked a brow in challenge as he contemplated a solution to this unforeseen impediment. Winning a young female most certainly did not fit into his scheme.

  Fairfax’s loony grin suggested he’d discovered the most brilliant of solutions.

  Miss Salisbury’s jaw went slack for an instant before she marshalled her composure and attended to folding her fan, then smoothed her already wrinkle-free, ugly as Hades skirts.

  Such courage she displayed. No histrionics, waterworks, or fainting. Nonetheless, betrayal registered in her eyes before she averted her troubled gaze.

  The first indication of meekness Pierce had observed in her.

  But then again, she’d just received a monumental blow with a great deal more finesse and comportment than any other female of his acquaintance would have done. And that included the unflappable threesome who flitted about this very ball somewhere. They believed it their duty to interfere in his life with the least provocation on an annoyingly regular basis.

  A self-satisfied smile pulled Fairfax’s mouth high on one side, revealing two missing teeth, and the others yellowed to the same hue as the Sauce Isigny covering Pierce’s asparagus at dinner last night.

  “Why, if a man can sell his wife, assuredly I can barter my ward.”

  A buzz of shocked whispers swept those circling the table, and Pembroke and Benton straightened abruptly in their chairs.

  Fairfax’s last callous remark ratcheted Pierce’s abhorrence up several notches.

  “Surely such a thing cannot be legal,” a woman exclaimed sotto voce, a trifle too animated to be truly appalled.

  “If he’s her guardian,” another chimed in, the male voice holding more than a tinge of lasciviousness, “he can do with her what he wishes.”

  Damn me if that isn’t the God awful truth.

  Like a bauble or trinket Fairfax no longer needed or a horse he’d grown tired of.

  “I shouldn’t mind at all if Lord Wainthorpe won me,” a third, sultry voice said.

  That sounded very much like the not-so-very-long-ago widowed Lady Odette Crutchley. She often hinted she would welcome an arrangement with him. In fact, as recently as the Colfields’ rout last week she’d cornered him on the terrace. A Covent-Garden courtesan couldn’t have been bolder or made more vulgar suggestions about how they might further their acquaintance.

  She’d not been happy when Pierce had less than cordially declined. He might prefer to dally with experienced women, but not ones who possessed no discretion whatsoever. Besides, she harbored a fondness for opium, had birthed two bastards by separate sires, and was rumored to carry the clap.

  “The gel’s worth at least thirty pounds.” Warming to his foul notion, Fairfax bobbed his head.

  Miss Salisbury’s pert chin edged upward the merest bit, and molten topaz sparks spewed from her eyes.

  Pierce masked his disgust behind a mocking smile. Her cousin put a high price on her. He would give him that much. “The gel?”

  He knew full well whom the baron meant but wanted to hear him say it. Miss Salisbury needed to hear her cousin speak the words, to realize the peril she was in. She would understand Pierce’s actions then.

  Probably a stretch there. She might forgive him then. Eventually.

  Fairfax waggled his pudgy fingers in Miss Salisbury’s direction, careful to avoid eye- contact. Good thing too, because the glare she leveled him would’ve eviscerated an elephant with one lash.

  “Bianca Salisbury, my ward and second cousin once removed. Or is it third cousin?” Fairfax sent her an inquiring glance and received a steely stare in return.

  “You don’t know how she’s related to you?”

  Fairfax shrugged. “’Tis something along those lines. Distant relation of some sort. I do know she’s a direct descendent of James II, and she knows how to manage a household and an estate, too. The chit’s a bluestocking through and through, though. Always has her nose in a book or newssheet. Never been to Town before.” He winked and gave another cunning, sideways smile. “Innocent of the ways of the world, if you take my meaning.”

  The buffoon made no effort to lower his voice, and more than one debaucher ogled her with renewed interest.

  “If Wainthorpe doesn’t accept your offer, Fairfax, I would be interested in negotiating something,” one cur had the ballocks to dare, and Lady Crutchley burst into snide laughter.

  Pierce yanked his head up to see what devil’s spawn made the remark. Three of London’s seediest peers openly leered at Miss Salisbury. Devil fly away with them.

  What did they think this was?

  A perverse game?

  Where did they think they were?

  A house of ill-repute or a Cyprian Ball?

  Miss Salisbury’s attention remained riveted on the baron’s back, but white lines framed her pinched mouth. Not a doubt she’d heard them.

  Such fortitude. Damn Pierce’s eyes if he wasn’t impressed. Such a woman might be worth getting to know.

  Several ladies exchanged fervent whispers behind their fans, and he doubted their hushed conversations were complimentary. Why didn’t any of these pillars of society rise to Miss Salisbury’s defense? Intervene and object to this fiasco?

  His sisters would have done, and for once he would have appreciated their meddling.

  No one expected him or the other rogues to champion Miss Salisbury. After all, notorious ne’re do wells didn’t make a habit of rescuing maidens in distress. But wasn’t there one person amongst this peacocking, propriety-touting assembly whose sense of morality and respectability—common decency for that matter—demand they defend her?

  Fairfax leaned forward, his tone more wheedling than congenial. “Not bad to look upon, but she’s too skinny for my taste.” He bowled his hands against his chest, and jostling them, winked again. “Though she’s plenty well-endowed where it counts, eh?”

  “Here, here,” a crass scoundrel called.

  Christ on the sacred cross.

  Such repugnance engulfed Pierce, he curled his toes and gritted his teeth to keep from reaching across the table and grabbing the baron by his damned throat. Then proceed to shake the mongrel until he passed out. Maybe Pierce would plant the other disrespectful sods a facer too. All of
them for daring to look upon Miss Salisbury with anything other than the deference due a gently-bred woman of her station.

  A direct descendent of James II, to boot.

  Instead, Pierce turned his full regard to her.

  Desperation and humiliation pooled in her eyes, now darkened to the hue of twilight in autumn. Her gaze never wavered from his, and although she spoke not a word, he heard her unspoken plea for aide across the room. Silently beseeching a man she didn’t know to help her.

  Compassion scraped away at the impenetrable wall he fortified himself behind.

  In that instant, he determined to use whatever means necessary, fair or foul, to remove her from Fairfax’s clutches. Pure hell to be a woman with no resources, to be at the mercy of a libertine such as her cousin.

  Pierce knew what the bugger was capable of. Had witnessed his cruelty firsthand. The baron’s kind picked battles with women and children but scampered off like a frightened insect when confronted with an opponent his equal.

  Time to put an end to this.

  “I’ll accept your wager,” Pierce said, still observing her.

  Disbelief, then momentary anguish flashed in her eyes.

  He tapped the I.O.U. “Add her as guarantee to our bet. Make no conditions either, or I shan’t accept your proposition.”

  The words fell from Pierce’s tongue without conscious thought.

  Miss Salisbury’s eyes rounded, then shrank to gauging, cinnamon slivers.

  “Agreed. That is, if you win, Wainthorpe. Which is unlikely as purple snow falling tonight.” As Fairfax pulled the foolscap toward him and scribbled away, he didn’t once glance in Miss Salisbury’s direction.

  Pierce accepted the sheet, and swiftly perused the amendment. He searched Fairfax’s confident features. “You didn’t assign her guardianship over to me? Should I be victorious, I would expect my ward to depart with me tonight.”

  “I’m telling you, there’s no need.” Blowing out a heavy breath, the baron only emphasized the mutiny lining his florid face. “This is all moot, as you shall see in a few moments.”