ALSO BY MAGGIE FENTON
Regency Romp Trilogy
The Duke’s Holiday
Written as Margaret Foxe:
Prince of Hearts
A Dark Heart
Thief of Hearts
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2015 Margaret Cooke
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503947894
ISBN-10: 1503947890
Cover design by becker&mayer!
To Penny, my fourteen-year-old rat terrier mix, the most ill-mannered, ill-tempered mongrel I have ever met, always lurking in corners, growling at unsuspecting house guests, and pilfering food from the kitchen no matter how hard we try to secure it from your greedy paws. You’re fat, you’re smelly, and your barks could wake the dead. I love you dearly.
No real dogs, wigs, or pianofortes were harmed in the making of this book.
Oh, and I have permission from my best friend (who is Welsh) to make fun of the Welsh. I did not get permission, however, from the Irish, the Cockneys, the French, or the residents of Baltimore. I ask for their forbearance.
CONTENTS
Start Reading
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Coda
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
“Can’t make out how you stand London Society. The thing has gone to the dogs . . .”
—Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband
Chapter One
In Which Sebastian Sherbrook Would Sooner Marry His Pianoforte
Hyde Park, London
1819
EVEN SEBASTIAN HIMSELF was shocked by how quickly trouble found him upon his homecoming. Two days off the ship from the Continent, the newly minted Marquess of Manwaring was in a dawn-lit backwater of Hyde Park choosing a Manton pistol from its plush red-velvet case, with a grim-faced Evelyn Leighton, Viscount Marlowe, by his side acting as his second.
To be precise, trouble hadn’t found him so much as waited for him, as trolls did under bridges in fairy tales, for unsuspecting passersby. His opponent resembled a troll, in fact. A very nervous—but also very indignant—troll. Not a good combination. Sir Oliver Blanchard was a squat, white-haired country squire with a ruddy turnip nose and a paunch, the type of English specimen more at home with his hounds than he was with other people. The impetus needed for him to leave his country estate and call Sebastian out had been pressing indeed, as it was the middle of pheasant season.
Two years—two years!—Sebastian had spent trying to put his misspent life behind him. Two years of some embarrassingly earnest soul-searching, during which he’d considered never returning to England again. But then news of his uncle’s death had drifted to him in the Levant, and after celebrating in Jerusalem, he’d decided to make his way back toward English soil at a slow crawl. That had been six months ago.
Several things struck him as appallingly ironic about his current predicament. Firstly, he had returned to England resolved toward a public reformation, only to be embroiled in the worst scandal of the Season. Secondly, he was completely innocent of the charges leveled against him. Thirdly, no one would ever believe either of these claims.
It was quite disheartening.
He even felt a modicum of sympathy for the man who was going to attempt to blow out his brains. Sir Oliver had no business here. The poor fellow could hardly hold the gun steady at his side, he was so nervous. Shooting at a man was quite different from the sort of sport squires enjoyed about their estates, and Sir Oliver was clearly not up to the challenge. But if the fellow had spared any notice for his wife and daughter instead of his dogs (Sir Oliver was purported to be a top breeder of long-haired setters), neither of them would be in this tangle.
Sebastian cursed the day he’d ever laid eyes on Miss Rosamund Blanchard. He had flirted with her at a ball two years ago out of boredom, but she had taken a few witty exchanges as permission to literally throw herself at him while he had strolled through a back garden looking for an exit. He’d barely managed to extricate himself from her greedy assault with his breeches—and virtue—intact.
She’d flung herself at him at every available opportunity thereafter, even going so far as to visit his rooms under cover of night at a house party. Her mission had apparently been seduction. To Sebastian, it had felt more like an attack. Her rather indiscreet pursuit—or rather, stalking—of him was one of the reasons he had left the country in the first place.
When she had turned up in Venice eight months ago at a party hosted by a mutual acquaintance and attempted to renew her fervent suit with the help of her scheming mother, Sebastian had been so disgusted he had left for the Levant the following day. Miss Blanchard was, suffice to say, a bit unbalanced. Well. More than a bit. Totally cracked in the head was a more apt description. But he had thought, surely, that his sojourn in the Holy Land would provide enough geographical distance to allow Miss Blanchard to recover her errant wits.
He was, alas, quite mistaken.
Imagine his surprise to discover, upon his return to England, that Miss Blanchard was breeding, and that she had named him as the father. He was alone in his surprise, however. The whole of London seemed to be acquainted with the sordid (and fictional) affair, and had already judged him guilty as charged.
Sir Oliver had demanded satisfaction. Marry his daughter, or else.
Sebastian had not hesitated to choose or else. He’d sooner marry his pianoforte, and so he’d told the old codger. Sir Oliver had been unprepared for this turn of events, however. He’d assumed Sebastian would do the gentlemanly thing.
Ha.
Clearly, Sir Oliver had not been apprised of the fact that Sebastian had been accused of being many things in his thirty-odd years, but not once had a gentleman been mentioned.
Sir Oliver’s second, Colonel Firth, hovered at the squire’s side, unable to hide his irritation. Firth was a Scotsman with hair an eyeball-searing shade of ginger—surpassing even the Duchess of Montford’s fiery mane in its intensity—and an alarming outbreak of freckles all over his fair skin. He speared Sebastian with a look that could only be described as murderous as he inspected Sir Oliver’s pistol. Sebastian arched his brow in return and smirked, since he knew it would further irritate the hot-blooded Scot. He was right. Colonel Firth’s spotted complexion was fast approaching the color of his hair.
/> Sebastian had never liked Colonel Firth. They had served together on the Peninsula, and Sebastian had witnessed enough of that man’s true character to give him a wide berth and absolutely no respect. Firth was the type of man who would have ordered his company to its death for his own personal glory. He had, in fact, done just that at Corunna, while remaining ensconced in the relative safety of his field tent. Five out of the hundred men under his command had survived, yet he had been promoted, hailed as a hero.
He was, in Sebastian’s opinion, a grossly incompetent bastard.
The fact that the Scot was Sir Blanchard’s crony did little to recommend the squire’s taste in company to Sebastian. And if he had to hazard a guess, he suspected it was the colonel who had put his friend up to this ridiculous duel. Though what personal vendetta the Scot had against him, he could not imagine.
Marlowe checked Sebastian’s pistol and handed it back to him, nodding curtly, though Sebastian saw the worry in his friend’s eyes. He and Marlowe had parted company two years ago on shaky terms. Marlowe had accused him of being too reckless with his own skin after the fire at Rylestone Hall, when he had rushed into the burning castle to rescue an errant pig (not exactly the wisest decision he’d ever made). Marlowe had a valid argument, but it was rather like the pot calling the kettle black, since Marlowe had plenty of his own self-destructive proclivities. They had since made amends during Marlowe’s brief holiday to Italy a year ago, but Sebastian couldn’t help but think he had let his friend down again. Though, for once, it was through no fault of his own.
Even Marlowe had agreed that the duel was necessary when Sir Oliver had thrown down the gauntlet, however. Marlowe was one of the two people in the world besides himself who was confident that the charge against him was absurd. He knew Sebastian’s secret, after all.
“Try not to get blown to bits, old boy,” Marlowe murmured as Sebastian walked toward the designated mark.
“I shall endeavor not to,” he returned wryly. “My valet would have a devil of a time with the stains.”
He met Sir Oliver at the mark and acknowledged the man with an overly gracious bow, which seemed to further flummox him. They turned back-to-back, then marched the agreed-upon eleven paces away from each other through the damp grass.
Speaking of stains. He scowled down at the dew attaching itself to his boots. One thing he loathed about duels was the dew. It wreaked havoc on his footwear.
Of course, he’d not need shining Hessians if he was moldering six feet under good English soil.
After his eleventh pace, he turned around and faced his opponent. Sebastian shook his head pityingly at the sight that greeted him. Sir Oliver was looking rather green about the gills, poor fellow. Someone should have informed him that Sebastian had never actually killed a man during his career as the reigning duelist of London.
Maimed, on one particularly memorable occasion, but never killed.
“Your shot, Lord Manwaring,” Colonel Firth informed him.
Sebastian gave Sir Oliver’s second a long, glacial stare as he cocked his pistol. He raised it and aimed briefly toward Colonel Firth’s nether regions, causing the man’s eyes to pop wide and his face to flush even more. Firth was obviously acquainted with the bloody outcome of Sebastian’s first and most infamous duel.
He wondered if he could get away with shooting the colonel, a waste of good English air if there ever was one. Bullets went wide of the mark all of the time.
Not his bullets, however. Everyone knew that since that first ghastly duel all those years ago, Sebastian’s bullets went precisely where he wanted them to go. He was an excellent marksman. He had, in fact, been a sharpshooter during the war. An appalling amount of French blood was on his hands.
The colonel also knew this, and he suspected Sir Oliver did as well, as evidenced by the sweat that poured down his temples despite the crisp November morning as Sebastian trained his pistol at the man’s head.
It really was not well done of him to drag out the moment, but he couldn’t help himself. Sir Oliver deserved to feel very uncomfortable indeed for inconveniencing him and ruining his boots. He should have grazed the man’s shoulder, at the very least, for being such a blind fool where Rosamund was concerned.
But in the end, Sebastian raised the pistol toward the sky and pulled the trigger. The war had given him a permanent distaste for bloodshed. He had no desire to create more.
Sir Oliver’s jaw dropped.
Sebastian lowered his smoking gun to his side and squared his shoulders, daring Sir Oliver with his eyes to take him down.
“Sir Oliver?” Marlowe said gruffly. “Your shot.”
It took a moment for Sir Oliver to recover enough presence of mind to respond. “Yes, of course. Right.” He raised the pistol in Sebastian’s direction. It wobbled.
Sebastian groaned inwardly, ice filling his veins. So the man was not going to do the polite thing and delope. And the unsteady ones were the worst. Most of the time the bullet went wide, in his experience, but occasionally it landed somewhere that could cause a great deal of pain and mess.
He dearly hoped his brains were not going to be fertilizing Hyde Park.
The shot exploded through the stillness of the morning, reverberating in his eardrums. He closed his eyes. He couldn’t help this brief gesture of cowardice. He didn’t want to die. He truly didn’t. Not yet. Not on a dueling green in Hyde Park, like a character out of some bad French melodrama.
It was a sentiment he wouldn’t have felt six months ago. He had always been so careless with his life, but with the death of his uncle, something inside of him had shifted. The world, so long a colorless, angry prison, had begun to change around him. Or perhaps he had begun to change. He had started to see beauty where there had been nothing but wretchedness, and possibilities where there had been nothing but dead ends.
The feelings were too new and fragile to trust, but he was not ready give up on them quite yet.
And when he closed his eyes, the memory of another pair of eyes, emerald, penetrating, passed over his consciousness, causing his heart to wrench. Would he ever see those eyes again?
He heard the hum of a bullet pass over his head, the whoosh of air ruffling his hair.
Then the world around him was still. Moments later, the rude caw of a crow passing above broke the silence. He was alive.
He opened his eyes.
Sir Oliver just glared at him with a mixture of frustration and relief, waving his smoking pistol angrily through the air.
Colonel Firth looked disappointed that no one was bleeding.
“This isn’t over, Manwaring,” the squire barked out.
Sebastian rolled his eyes. Of course it wasn’t.
He threw aside the pistol in disgust, gave the man his deepest, most insolent bow, and swaggered from the field. No one would have suspected from his arrogant gait that his legs felt the approximate consistency of marmalade. But he would be thrice damned if he’d give his opponents the satisfaction of seeing him break. He made it all the way to Marlowe’s waiting curricle before his body betrayed him. Sebastian shook so badly that Marlowe had to surreptitiously hoist his friend up into the vehicle by the seat of his buckskins. A most inconvenient indignity.
Marlowe slid in beside him and whipped his cattle into motion, leaving Hyde Park behind them. When they were a safe distance away from Sir Oliver and the colonel, he slowed the curricle and reached into his lapel, producing two celebratory cheroots. Sebastian took both of them, lit them, and returned one to Marlowe with an unsteady hand.
Marlowe flashed him a wry look after they had smoked in silence for a moment. “That were a close one, Sherry,” Marlowe drawled, using the nickname he’d given Sebastian long ago at Harrow and following his usual disregard for the basic rules of grammar. Marlowe loved to sound as if he’d been brought up in the Seven Dials and took every opportunity he could to butcher the
King’s English.
Sebastian grunted and fetched Marlowe’s ubiquitous flask from underneath the seat. He took a healthy sip of Scotch whiskey, then another, enjoying the liquor’s slow burn down his throat, the way it warmed him to the tips of his fingers and eased his quaking nerves. He passed the flask to Marlowe.
“I am done with dueling, Marlowe,” he declared. “I vow that is my last dawn appointment.”
Marlowe looked skeptical at this pronouncement. “Sir Oliver’ll take your delopement as proof of your guilt, y’know,” he said after a generous pull from his flask.
“Should I have shot him through the heart, then? And what would that have proved? My innocence?” He snorted. “No one shall believe me innocent, no matter what I do.”
“True. A demmed fix. And for once, you’re not its cause.”
“The irony is not lost on me, I assure you.”
“We’ve weathered worse, y’know.”
“If you’re trying to make me feel better, don’t bother.” He seized the flask and finished off the whiskey. “This was not the sort of homecoming I’d envisioned.”
“What say you to a trip to White’s? Put everything into perspective once you’re blind stinking drunk. At least it works for me.”
“Tempting,” Sebastian lied. He did want to get drunk, but not at his club. He had tried that yesterday, and it had ended with him staring down the dueling green at Sir Oliver. No doubt the patrons of White’s were eagerly awaiting the results of the duel. Unbeknownst to Sebastian, a betting pool had started as soon as he had set foot on English soil.
He’d not been aware of the rumors circulating about him until Marlowe had found him last night and apprised him of them. But he’d certainly been aware of the whispers behind his back, the knowing smirks sent in his direction by the preening dandies, and the disapproving glowers bestowed upon him by the stuffed-shirted old guard.
One would think he, of all people, was used to being the object of gossip and innuendo. He was not. At least, not when he himself was uncertain as to the cause.
Virtuous Scoundrel (The Regency Romp Trilogy Book 2) Page 1
