Courting Chaos (Dunaway's Daughters Book 2)

by Lynne Barron

Until finally, he waylaid her in the hall beyond the upper gallery as she stepped out of the ladies’ retiring room.

  “Ah, beautiful Hesperia,” the irredeemable rogue said by way of greeting, bowing with a flourish and gifting her with a wicked grin. “Might you have a space on your dance card, and a smidgen of compassion in your heart, for an old man to claim?”

  “As it so happens, this next dance is unclaimed as yet, my lord.” She wasn’t precisely certain, what with her dance card having been misplaced at some point, but she rather thought the next set had been engaged by the Duke of Montclaire. Ah well, His Grace would hardly make a fuss, considering he had only requested the dance to irritate his duchess.

  “Splendid.” Dunaway showed more sense than she would have credited him with when, instead of laying her hand on his arm, he simply motioned her to precede him.

  As she walked down the stairs beside him, it occurred to her that if anyone were likely to see beyond the spectacle of the evening, beyond the omissions and half-truths presented for the ton’s delectation and dissection, this might well be the moment.

  But the ball was winding to a close, a good number of the guests having already departed and those remaining most likely in their cups to one degree or another. The ballroom was markedly dimmer than it had been at the beginning of the night. The few candles that hadn’t burned down to the quick now flickered in their sconces. Puddles of wax were smeared across the floor below the chandeliers, and the hastily arranged red flowers had long since wilted in their vases and urns. Chains of garnets hung haphazardly from the bannister and pooled on the stairs. Glasses, plates and wadded up serviettes were piled on nearly every available surface.

  Harry had attended precisely two balls in her lifetime and had stayed at the other for barely two hours; thus, she’d never seen the aftermath. It was rather a wretched sight.

  “Depressing, isn’t it?” Dunaway asked, waving one hand to indicate the remnants of the revelry. “Rather like the sight of a well-used harlot after a night of debauchery.”

  “I imagine you have witnessed both often enough to be something of an expert.”

  “Gracious, no, my pet,” Dunaway replied with a theatrical shiver of revulsion. “I have long been in the habit of making a graceful exit before I am forced to face the consequences of my dissolution and depravity.”

  “And yet, here you are.”

  The orchestra struck up the first bars of a tune, and much to Harry’s dismay, it was a waltz. A few couples straggled onto the dancefloor around them, laughing and weaving about drunkenly.

  “Shall we?” Dunaway stopped and turned to her, startling her with his sudden proximity.

  Fine lines feathered out from the corners of his eyes, deep grooves bracketed his mouth and gray hairs were sprinkled through his golden locks.

  Her heart gave a peculiar thump at the proof of the passage of time written across his features. Oh, he was still handsome, beautiful really, with his chiseled cheekbones, wide mouth and square jaw. But he was no longer the devilishly dashing man who had loomed larger than life in her mind.

  She could not remember a time when she hadn’t loathed the earl, hadn’t inwardly cringed when his name was mentioned, hadn’t felt anger boil up inside her at the mere sight of him, even from a distance.

  And now, through her own folly, she was faced with the choice to either allow him to touch her, to take her in his arms, or to flee the floor like a coward bolting from the battlefield.

  Dunaway kicked out a leg in a pretty bow and offered his hand, the gleam in his green eyes nothing less than a dare.

  Harry placed her hand in his with an audible slap.

  “Ah, my brave girl,” he murmured around a low chuckle.

  Then his free hand was at her waist and he was twirling her around the dancefloor, deftly maneuvering between the other couples until they were in an empty space near the French doors.

  “So, my pretty darling, how does it feel?” Dunaway drawled, the smile twisting his lips full of mischief and mockery.

  “How does it feel to finally give you the comeuppance you so richly deserve?”

  “Is it all that you imagined?”

  Was it? Harry realized that in all the years of plotting and planning, formulating and discarding one strategy after another, she had never stopped to consider how she would feel when the deed was done.

  If she had, she might have supposed she would feel vindicated, triumphant, perhaps elated. Instead, she felt oddly hollow. As if the place inside her that had been bursting with fury and the need for vengeance was now just empty space desperately in need of filling.

  Still, she would be tarred and feathered before admitting it. “It is all that I imagined and more.”

  “I will confess I did not see it coming,” Dunaway replied, his smile dimming only slightly. “I always imagined you coming at me from a different direction.”

  “Which direction would that be?” Harry asked, wondering if she’d somehow missed an opportunity along the way.

  “Why, from the direction of your sisters.”

  “You imagined I would use your daughters to exact vengeance?”

  “It is my understanding that your intention was to lay waste to all I hold dear,” he answered readily. “There is nothing on earth I hold dearer than my daughters.”

  “Is this the part where you plead for mercy on behalf of your poor, penniless, unmarriageable daughters?” Harry asked around an exasperated laugh. “Honestly, I expected a bit more finesse from you, my lord. After all, I inherited the trait from someone, and it certainly wasn’t from my female relations.”

  “Is that how you saw this scenario playing out, with me begging for mercy?” Dunaway asked in obvious surprise. “Hmm, I suppose it might well have played out that way. Except my daughters will not be left penniless in the wake of your vengeance, will they?” He spun her in a circle, pulling her out of the path of Viscount Aberdeen and the Duchess of Cheltenham as the couple briefly invaded their space and their privacy. “Lilith and Sissy are well-settled with their respective spouses. As we speak, Annalise is eloping with Mr. Maxwell, the proud new owner of two hundred acres of land in the Welsh Marches perfect for the raising of horses. Madeline is soon to be a writer complete with an advance and royalty portion unprecedented for a heretofore unpublished author. And the village of Bartlesborough has recently experienced an influx of handsome young bachelors for Kate to choose from when the time comes.”

  Harry missed the next turn, stumbling over her own feet before catching the rhythm of the steps once more.

  “I imagine you’ve made some sort of provision for your brother, my poor, penniless heir,” Dunaway continued smoothly, quite as if she’d not trod on his toes. “Shares in the British Consolidated Mining Corporation, perhaps?”

  It aggravated her to no end that he knew her so well while not knowing her at all. “William’s name is on the middling list, with dividends to be put in trust until he reaches his majority.”

  “Well done.”

  “Well done?” Harry repeated, irritated by his praise when he ought to be begging by now.

  “You’ve anticipated every problem, planned for every contingency, flawlessly executed your campaign and achieved your life’s goal,” he replied carelessly.

  Unaccountably unsettled by the notion that in destroying him she’d somehow managed to make him proud of her, Harry lashed out with words too long bottle up inside her. “Why did you do it? Of all the willing women in London, why did it have to be Arabella?”

  “You might as well ask why a snake bites,” Dunaway replied. “It is simply my nature to take when a pretty woman freely and affectionately offers.”

  “She was just a girl, and your mistress’s cousin, the closest thing Gwendolyn had to a sister.”

  “Arabella knew what she was about. She was two and twenty, after all,” Dunaway replied, not so much in defense of his actions but perhaps simply to point out the similarity of their ages and the disparity of their
choices. “And you must not imagine Arabella and Gwendolyn loved each other as sisters. Certainly not as you love your sisters.”

  “That’s the extent of your explanation?” Harry demanded. “You are a serpent, Arabella was a light skirt, and there was no love between the cousins?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Do you feel no remorse, no regret?”

  “Those are two entirely different questions,” Dunaway replied with a shake of his head. “I will be forever remorseful to have broken the heart of my darling Gwendolyn, but I shall never regret the affair with Arabella, for without it you would never have been born to bedevil me, my pet.”

  “I am not your pet, your brave girl or your pretty darling. I am nothing of yours.”

  “As much as you might wish it otherwise, you are my daughter.” He whispered the words, soft and sardonic, yet Harry did not miss the flash of anger in his eyes, there and gone in an instant.

  It only served to fuel her own fury. “And yet you allowed me to live with a spoiled, selfish woman who ran off before my sixth birthday, leaving me in the care of a drunkard who never let me forget, not for a single day, that I was nothing but trouble. Conceived of an unruly passion, born of strife and discord, raised in a maelstrom and destined to live a tumultuous, turbulent life as the plaything of men just like you.”

  “Hesperia—” Dunaway began.

  “Even my name was but a means by which I was made to comprehend my worth,” Harry all but snarled. “Hesperia, Nymph of the Night. Eris, Goddess of Chaos. O’Connell, Descendent of a Bold Hound. I cannot alter the fact that I am descended from an audacious hound who will chase after every bitch in heat, but I will be no man’s nightly entertainment, and my life will not be one of never-ending pandemonium.”

  Dunaway blinked, and his mouth fell open, but no sound emerged, as Harry had shocked him speechless. She had quite shocked herself, with both her vulgar language and the voicing of fears she’d rarely allowed to infiltrate her thoughts.

  Dunaway recovered his composure, snapped his mouth shut and spun Harry in a tight circle, pulling her closer in the process.

  “How could you abandon me?” The words were out before the thought had fully formed, and she immediately wished them back.

  “And so we come to the crux of it,” the earl murmured.

  “That is not the crux of it,” Harry hissed, attempting without success to tug her fingers from his clasp. “Abandoning me is the least of your crimes.”

  “I would have set Arabella up in her own household and been a proper father to you,” he replied. “I pleaded with her to allow me to do just that and more. She would settle for nothing short of marriage and, bigamy laws being what they are, I was unable to accommodate her.”

  “So you simply allowed her to marry Jimmy, allowed him to be a father to me?”

  “I believed it to be for the best, but even so, it was with a heavy heart that I relinquished the right to call you my daughter.”

  “How heavy was your purse?” Harry retorted.

  “It is customary for a gentleman to pay for the care and support of his children,” Dunaway protested, clearly surprised by the accusation explicit in the question.

  “Tell me, my lord, what was the going rate to be rid of a troublesome girl back then?”

  “I did not pay O’Connell in order to be rid of you.”

  Harry could not tolerate another moment in his arms, could not bear to listen to one more lie tripping from his lips. She had to end this farce and get away from the man. “If you intend to beg for mercy, now would be the time to do so. Though I won’t give you a penny more than seventy-three pounds.”

  “I’ll not beg you for money.”

  “What of forgiveness?” she demanded. “Will you beg me for forgiveness?”

  “Is that what it will take?” Dunaway asked. “If I fall to my knees, humble myself and beg your pardon, will you forgive me?”

  “Never.”

  Dunaway’s eyes flashed, and his lips trembled around a smile when Harry succeeded in yanking her hand from his and stepping back out of harm’s way.

  “That’s it, then?” he asked. “You have well and truly ruined me, and now you will simply go on about your life?”

  “Quite cheerfully.” Only she did not feel the least bit cheerful.

  And she suspected that going on about her life would no longer be a simple matter.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  A fine mist of rain was falling when Harry arrived in Wellclose Square.

  Her flat was dark but for the silvery moonlight trickling through a narrow space between the drapes Prudence had neglected to fully close before departing for the night.

  The silence had an eerie, familiar quality to it that Harry could not quite place, for she was rarely awake in the wee hours of the night. Pondering the peculiar nature of it, Harry lit the kindling and logs stacked at the ready in the grate. As the heat of the flames began to chase the damp chill from the air, she picked out the threads along the side seam of the absurdly scanty gown Pru had carefully stitched her into nearly ten hours previously. The gown fell to her feet with a soft swoosh, and she stepped from the puddle of scarlet silk and black lace, kicked off her tortuous slippers, rolled her stockings down her legs and removed the chopsticks holding her hair coiled loosely atop her head.

  The rain began to fall in earnest, and she padded across the floor in her corset and shift to push back the drapes. It wasn’t until she peered outside in search of Precious Pincushion that Harry recognized the strange silence as the sound of isolation.

  She’d not experienced the like since she was a girl pacing the scuffed floors of the tiny cottage in Shropshire, moving from one window to the next as if the change of view might offer up something beyond the desolate landscape of grass and gorse, rocky outcroppings and scrubby trees twisted and bent by the wind.

  So many hours and days, months and years she’d walked those weathered boards. Twelve paces from the front window to the back. Thirteen splintered steps up to the second story, only to repeat the effort above stairs.

  Waiting for her mother to return as she’d earnestly and repeatedly promised while packing a single valise before walking away that long ago day.

  Watching for Jimmy O’Connell to stagger, drunk and disheveled, up the long, dusty lane after a night, or three, of debauchery in the village.

  Wishing for the shadowy figure of a father she’d never known to come galloping over the hills on a white charger.

  Hoping, praying, for someone, anyone, to save her from her wretchedly lonely existence.

  It was ludicrous to feel such isolation, such aching, unrelenting loneliness now.

  She was no longer that girl. Through sheer force of will and a stubborn desire to control her own destiny, she’d fashioned her own fate. She was mistress of her world, mistress of the small slice of London she’d carved out for herself. That world was hers to control, hers to populate with friends and acquaintances, companions and confidants, connections and colleagues of her own choosing.

  And most importantly, her world was inhabited by her sisters. Never mind that they rarely ventured within her sphere, and rarer still did she venture within theirs. It was enough to know their orbits would align from time to time.

  Harry froze, one hand twisting in the drapes while the other pressed low on her belly in an attempt push back the swell of panic rising within her as she realized she’d had no need to hedge her bet when she’d wagered the truth of her maternity against yet another falsehood regarding her paternity. Her sisters had ignored and avoided her throughout the evening, efficiently and effectively taking the first steps necessary to ensure that her gamble paid off in the end. Lilith, Kate, Madeline and Sissy, even Annalise who rarely saw beyond her own pessimistic prognostications, had comprehended what she herself had failed to acknowledge—Harry could no longer be seen in the company of the Earl of Dunaway’s daughters.

  Not after word spread that she had single-handedly sw
ept the rug out from beneath their lecherous father’s feet and destroyed any expectation he had of making good on his debts. The web of lies, omissions and half-truths she and Withy had woven was far too fragile to withstand the scrutiny.

  Between one stuttering breath and the next, Harry recognized her own ghastly miscalculation. In endeavoring to shield her sisters from scandal, she had neatly severed the connection she’d desperately hoped to preserve. Always the connection had been tenuous at best, haphazardly formed and indiscriminately maintained through infrequent meetings and sporadic correspondence. But she’d known it was there, depended upon the thread of that connection to keep her tethered to the fine line she’d walked. And now it would be gone.

  Only Lilith—pragmatic, poetic, forever pregnant Lilith—would remain as something of a constant in Harry’s life, acknowledged as her cousin but never as her sister. Harry would no longer enjoy the occasional dinner during which Sissy rhapsodized over Thomas’s every last utterance and Annalise prophesized doom and gloom. There would be no more periodic carriage rides through the park with a green-around-the-gills Madeline. No unanticipated, though always whole-heartedly welcome, visits from Kate to take in a bout or while away a rainy day.

  It was too high a price to pay. So high it might well bankrupt her in ways that had nothing whatsoever to do pence, shillings or pounds.

  Harry adamantly and absolutely refused to pay the price.

  So, she had whispered a few words in the right ears, provided a pointed suggestion here, a seemingly innocuous query there. It had all been done with a bit of subtlety and a smidgeon of finesse. The gossip had been bandied about Town, no doubt, but it had not yet become scandal, let alone ruination.

  She would simply halt the rumors of Dunaway’s financial demise, and she wouldn’t even need another ostentatious display to do so. In fact, it could all be accomplished quietly and with only minimal fuss.

  Harry wasn’t precisely certain where she would find the funds required to pay off the scoundrel’s debts, loans, markers and merchant accounts, what with every spare shilling invested in the mining operation just now. Still, there was always something of value to be pawned, traded or sold. Be it a bauble, business interest or boon.