Virtuous Scoundrel (The Regency Romp Trilogy Book 2)

by Maggie Fenton

  “Look like yer going to yer funeral, milord,” Crick remarked.

  “I feel like it. I’m off. Oh, and by the way, I won last night,” he said, pausing at his pianoforte long enough to extract a small purse he’d stowed under its top upon arriving home in the wee hours.

  Sebastian pulled out a few coins for his own use and shoved the rest of the pouch at Crick, who inspected the contents rather avariciously.

  “Shall I be expectin’ you for afternoon tea, milord?” Crick asked with a straight face.

  Sebastian snorted and strode past his manservant. Afternoon tea indeed.

  “I don’t know why I put up with you,” Sebastian murmured fondly, taking up his hat and gloves. “I really don’t. I’m a bloody marquess now, and you’re my subordinate, Crick. A Cockney, for God’s sake. You’re not supposed to address me in such an insolent manner.”

  “Whatever you say, milord,” Crick said, still smiling broadly.

  “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have important lordly things to do today.”

  “I’m sure you do, milord,” Crick said in an unconvinced tone.

  “See if you can’t make something out of that purse, will you? I fancy a new pair of boots. With tassels.”

  Crick muttered something under his breath about that particular statement, and Sebastian caught the words “like a hole in your head” toward the end.

  “What’s that, Crick?”

  “Not a bloomin’ fing, milord, not a fing. ’Ave a pleasant day,” he said, all false sincerity.

  With that, Sebastian left his lodgings and clambered down the steps of his building and out onto the bustling thoroughfare of his street in Soho, a district swarming with expatriate Frenchmen and brothels. Rich gentlemen kept their mistresses tucked away in this part of the city, and bachelors like himself (i.e., down on their luck) took advantage of the cheap rent. Sebastian preferred its pace of life to that of the hallowed streets of Mayfair, though he had not exactly managed to get a prime address even in this section of the city. He was perilously close to the dubious east side of Soho, where the stews began to bleed into the extremely thin veneer of middle-class respectability. Pickpockets were as thick as squirrels were in a forest. He kept his attention firmly set on his precious watch collection as he picked his way down the street, musing on his upcoming day.

  Which did nothing to dispel his headache.

  This business with the Blanchards had gone far beyond even the most liberal definitions of civility and reasonableness. In Sebastian’s opinion, Sir Oliver had bungled the entire affair from the beginning, first by allowing his daughter to become the talk of the town, then by continuing to pursue Sebastian even after the duel. Sebastian was quite incredulous that Sir Oliver still thought he could make him marry his daughter. As if bringing him up on charges of breach of promise would make him more amenable! The outrageousness of the situation would have been laughable had Sebastian not been the one having to endure it.

  He wanted to take Sir Oliver by the shoulders and shake some sense into the man. He was sure one visit to his current address would make Sir Oliver think twice about his dogged pursuit of “justice.” It was clear from the terms of Sir Oliver’s suit that he thought Sebastian had inherited a fortune along with the title. But Sebastian was not about to reveal anything of his personal fortunes to the man, even if it might give Sir Oliver some pause in trying to install his daughter as the next marchioness. Call it pride, call it stubbornness, call it stupidity, but he refused to use anything other than the simple truth to win this battle with the Blanchards.

  He was innocent, damn it.

  And the more that Sir Oliver pushed, the more he dug his heels in. Logic and reason had long since been abandoned. This was a battle of wills.

  With Montford at his side, Sebastian had every reason to be optimistic. Montford’s collection of solicitors, clerks, and lawyers were the rough equivalent of a Spartan legion: implacable, mercenary. It was through this legion that Montford had recently banished his wife’s erstwhile antagonist and abductor, Mr. Lightfoot, to the farthest reaches of New South Wales for the rest of his life. In chains. With those sorts of results, Sebastian was not too proud to accept Montford’s aid if it meant winning the point against Sir Oliver.

  He would not marry Rosamund Blanchard. He had not put the baby in her belly, and he was not about to claim it as his own. How could she do this to him? What grudge, what obsession, was great enough to warrant this deception? He had spoken to her, flirted with her, once. Once, two years ago.

  And moreover, why would she ever think he was worth all of the fuss and bother?

  Sebastian hailed a cab and gave the direction to Westminster, then settled back in his seat, pressing his fingertips to the bridge of his nose in an effort to relieve the unremitting ache behind his eyes.

  When he finally arrived at the solicitor’s office, after an interminable journey across the city, Montford was waiting for him inside, wearing his usual expression of disapproval at his tardiness. It did nothing to improve his mood.

  “You look like hell,” Montford said by way of greeting.

  Sebastian just growled. “Let’s just get this over with. Is he here?”

  The duke nodded. “In the next room. With an unexpected guest.”

  “Don’t tell me he’s brought her.”

  “Appalling, but true. A last attempt by a desperate man to bring you around.” Montford gave him a commiserating look. “Don’t worry, they’ve not a leg to stand on. It won’t go to court.”

  Sebastian felt an upsurge of disgust for the whole situation. “I can’t believe he’s brought her. I can’t believe she’d have the nerve to come.”

  Montford hesitated. “Are you sure you won’t change your mind?”

  “What? Marry her? How can you ask it?”

  “Had to, old boy. We’ll prevail, but the scandal will ruin you. Marriage to her, even under these public circumstances, would mitigate the damage.”

  “I’m already ruined.”

  “Not like this. You won’t be welcome at White’s after this.”

  “I don’t give a damn.” It wasn’t even a lie, now that this latest scandal had revealed just how many true friends he had. Two, one of whom stood next to him now. Three if he counted Crick.

  Montford sighed wearily. “Very well, let us proceed.”

  They entered an interior room, where a phalanx of solicitors faced one another across a large table. Sebastian saw Sir Oliver, red-faced and shaking with rage, as usual, at one end. At his side, a woman he only vaguely recognized cowered in her seat behind a black veil. There was no mistaking her condition. Her belly swelled out in front of her, the perfect melodramatic tableau. She raised her eyes as he strode into the room. He was satisfied to see her flinch at the look she saw on his face. As if she’d expected anything else.

  Sebastian took his seat next to Montford, and for the next quarter of an hour glowered directly at Rosamund Blanchard and her father as the solicitors argued across the table. He was doubtless a bad person, for he felt no sympathy for his accuser. In fact, he felt a cruel satisfaction when she began dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. Only his pity for the poor child she carried kept him from totally hardening his heart. It was rather doomed, through no fault of its own, before its life had even started.

  Sir Oliver, he noted, did nothing to comfort his daughter.

  Montford was good to his word, for his team of solicitors thoroughly trounced Sir Oliver’s. The case would not move forward. Sebastian felt no relief, however. This was a Pyrrhic victory. Montford was right to point out that he was now, officially, a pariah.

  Thank you, Sir Oliver, he thought bitterly as he rose to his feet while the solicitors gathered up their papers and departed the chamber. The old squire had singlehandedly destroyed any chance he ever had of achieving a modicum of respectability, a feat even Sebastian himse
lf had failed to do in his career as London’s Worst Libertine. He’d never clean up his reputation enough to convince a certain widow of his worthiness.

  Not that he wanted to convince her of anything. After their last less than salubrious encounter, his contempt for her had far outpaced his ridiculous infatuation. But it would have been nice to have the choice.

  Of course, Sir Oliver’s work was not done, for he cornered Sebastian before he could escape the room, dragging his pregnant daughter up behind him.

  “I hope you’re happy with yourself,” Sir Oliver raged.

  “I can assure you, sir, I am not,” he drawled.

  Sir Oliver jabbed his finger toward his daughter. “How can you look at her and not feel ashamed?”

  Rosamund began to wail. Dear Lord.

  Sebastian narrowed his eyes on Sir Oliver, filled with the righteous indignation of the innocent. “I am not ashamed of myself, for I am not responsible for her condition. Really, I am growing weary of repeating myself. I did not lie with your daughter.”

  “You are a cad. A bounder. A half-breed spawn of a French whore!”

  Sebastian’s blood went hot, his vision went red. No one insulted his mother like that. He took a step forward, crowding the squire. Montford put a steadying hand on his arm. “Are you provoking me into calling you out, sirrah? Because I shall oblige, and I shall demand sabers this time, damn the rules of conduct,” he spat out.

  “Sebastian . . .” Montford warned.

  He was not through. “I am ashamed not of myself, but of you, Sir Oliver, for making a public spectacle of yourself and your family. And I am ashamed of your daughter, who is a cruel liar.” He turned to Rosamund. “How can you face me yet still continue this ridiculous farce?”

  “Do not address my daughter,” Sir Oliver bit out.

  Sebastian was done holding his rage inside. Just done. If Montford had not been restraining him, he would have thrown Sir Oliver a facer. “If you did not want me to do that, you should not have brought her here today. What did you think to accomplish? That I would be so moved by the sight of her that I would put a ring on her finger? Even if I did, what good would it do? Her reputation is destroyed—so is my own. No respectable family would ever receive her, even if she were the marchioness.”

  “It is the principle of the thing,” Sir Oliver growled.

  Sebastian snorted. “You wanted money. You would drag your daughter through the courts like some circus act, forge marriage contracts, all for a bit of blunt.”

  Sir Oliver’s face went purple with rage. “I should kill you.”

  “You had your chance on the dueling green, sirrah. Your poor aim is not my problem.” He turned toward Rosamund, who gawped at him as if she’d never seen him before. “Madam, I suggest you find the father of your child and marry him before you are cast beyond the pale. And leave me the hell alone. Good day to you.”

  He stalked toward the door.

  “This is not over, Manwaring,” Sir Oliver called out to him. Yet again. How tiresome. “You can’t hide behind the duke’s coattails forever. I shall have satisfaction, one way or another.”

  Sebastian did not grace him with a response. He was burning with such rage and frustration that he was not even aware of reaching the streets until he was standing in the November gloom with Montford.

  “I think that man just threatened your life,” Montford said as they waited for the ducal carriage.

  Sebastian waved away the idea. “He’s done his worst.”

  Montford looked doubtful. “I don’t know. I’d say he’s quite at the end of his tether. And he’s absolutely convinced you’re responsible for debauching his daughter. If I were in his shoes, I’d not rest until you were six feet under.”

  He waved away Montford’s concern. “He hasn’t the stomach for that sort of thing. He couldn’t even shoot me when he had the chance.”

  “He doesn’t need to shoot you necessarily. He could simply hire someone to do it for him.”

  Sebastian felt a momentary twinge of foreboding, but dismissed it as paranoia. “No, I believe he’ll simply reconcile himself to seeing me ruined,” he said after a moment.

  “Most likely. Well, I think lunching at the club is out of the question,” Montford said, pulling out his watch to track the time.

  “Indeed,” Sebastian muttered. He’d not exactly been welcome since the duel, and when word reached his esteemed peers of today’s outcome, he was likely facing disbarment, as Montford had predicted. Bloody hypocrites.

  “Let’s proceed to Montford House for a late meal. Then we’ll go to Angelo’s. What say you?”

  Sebastian sighed. Angelo’s was likely to be overrun by the same clientele who frequented White’s, but Sebastian doubted he’d be turned away. He was personal friends and sparring partners with its owner. But while the thought of taking out his frustrations—which were legion—on a worthy opponent sounded very agreeable at the moment, he did not wish to endure the company of his peers. Not even Montford’s.

  “Not today.” The carriage arrived, but he made no move for it. Montford gave him a questioning look as he mounted the steps. “I shall walk home.”

  Montford’s brow creased in concern. “Are you sure?”

  “Quite.” He needed some way to work off his anger, and a nice long stroll through London’s malodorous streets sounded quite the thing.

  When Montford’s carriage had disappeared into the late-afternoon traffic, Sebastian let out a breath he’d not realized he was holding. Nausea churned in his belly, and an icy sweat beaded on his forehead. He’d not been so angry in an age. He loosened his cravat with a jerk of his trembling fingers and started down the street, willing his roiling emotions to calm.

  But it was hard. London was unseasonably hot this November, and when he attempted to further undo his cravat, he pricked his palm on the end of his cravat pin. Blood welled from the wound, and he cursed. He watched the blood drip down his wrist, staining his lace sleeve, his vision blurring.

  Suddenly he was hundreds of miles from the street, and many years removed from the present. And he wasn’t walking down a cobblestone street, but rather lying on a cold damp lawn, the blood pouring from his left hand. He’d been so close to cocking up his toes in the aftermath of that duel, as infection had set in from the wound on his palm and held his body in its thrall for weeks. He’d not particularly wanted to pull through that dark time, but he’d not counted on Marlowe’s stubborn refusal to let him die, nor later on Montford’s single-minded purpose to see him well again.

  He’d not succeeded in killing himself or his uncle in the end. Even worse, he’d doomed himself to a long life without his one solace. His hand had healed. Mostly. He could still play the pianoforte better than most, but only for short intervals, before the pain in his left hand became so overwhelming he was forced to stop. He’d quickly had to give up any hope of following his dream of becoming a virtuoso performer. It was the sort of irony that should be relegated to high tragedy, not his meaningless life.

  Sebastian closed his palm and squeezed, feeling the burn of the cut, welcoming the pain.

  That period of his life was the last time he’d been as angry as he was this day. Since then, he’d lived his life as recklessly as he could manage, his anger banked behind a thick layer of indifference, almost hoping he’d come to a bad end.

  Since he’d known Katherine, however, even the idea of death-by-debauchery had lost its appeal.

  And just like that, his thoughts turned to the one thing he’d been trying to ignore since he’d awakened.

  His heart squeezed in anguish.

  She could never be his, for so many reasons. She would never spare him a glance. She thought him unworthy.

  Perhaps, he thought, he and Rosamund were alike after all, both dangerously obsessed with unattainable people. It was a new and frankly horrifying insight. He had nev
er felt the knuckle-clenching desire for a woman that he did for Katherine. It was a rather perverse fixation on the one woman in the world he could never have. And he’d like to believe that it was because she was so out-of-bounds that he was obsessed. But it wasn’t true. He’d wanted her—ached for her—in those brief moments before he’d known who she was. And he would have tried his damnedest to make himself worthy of her, had she been anyone else.

  How could she have married a man like his uncle? How could she have consciously chosen such an empty life? To resign herself to a perverse husband, a cold bed, an empty nursery, all for security and title? He had thought her something different when he had watched her from afar, playing that damned Beethoven sonata with her heart on her sleeve, but it had all been a performance.

  He hated that his body still wanted her, still craved her touch.

  And that his heart still desired her approval.

  The sun began to inch its way toward the horizon as he continued his journey into the shabbier side of the city. Sebastian slouched into the shadows of the buildings, pulling his hat low over his brow. He didn’t exactly stand out in his fine clothes, but he didn’t want to be recognized. As much as he’d dismissed Montford’s concerns, Sir Oliver’s threats were not far from his mind. He cursed—and not for the first time—his face. He’d rather be ordinary looking. He’d even take Crick’s ugly bulldog features over his own—

  Well, maybe not. That was going a bit far.

  But plain would be nice. A squint would be nice, or maybe a big nose, or crooked teeth. He’d rather anything stare back at him from the mirror than what he saw.

  Which was his mother.

  His mother, whose unhappy life and sordid death haunted him still.

  Shrugging off his latest bleak thought, he sidestepped a particularly foul-looking puddle and narrowly dodged the contents of a chamber pot being thrown out of a window above him.

  That was just disgusting.

  And clearly unhealthy.