by Lenora Bell
Watchfulness in her eyes now. A slight tensing of her fine-boned shoulders. “What’s that, Your Grace?”
“There will be no more visiting of properties or excavating of attics. I see through your act and I know you’re not searching for ancient goddesses. It’s a modern-day duke you’re after.”
She drew a swift breath. “You’re entirely mistak—”
“It won’t be me,” he said abruptly, cutting her protests short. “It won’t be me . . . but you’ll have your pick of every other eligible peer.”
“What . . . what do you mean?” She searched his face with something close to panic in her eyes.
“Look around us. Everyone’s watching. The first waltz of the season and I chose you.”
Her gaze darted around the room. “No, no. This isn’t what I wanted at all.” She shook her head and silken curls brushed his jaw.
The music ended. He stepped away.
She hugged her arms against her chest, her eyes flat as etched glass.
He experienced a tiny qualm of something close to guilt. She was a very gifted actress.
“I made you popular.” He bowed. “You’re welcome.”
Cold alertness froze her face. “Nothing can make me popular, Your Grace. Not even you.”
“Care to place a wager on that?” Dalton was known for his outrageous wagers. The diversion of Lady Dorothea’s instant popularity would make excellent fodder for the betting books at White’s. Keep all those idle noblemen entertained.
Keep them from suspecting him of being anything other than one of their tribe—a rakehell with too much leisure time and a taste for scandal.
Dalton steered Lady Dorothea back to her mother, Lady Desmond, whom he’d had the distinct displeasure of spending several days with during Harland’s bride hunt the previous summer. The countess was as cool and calculating as they came.
“Truly, I’m not after suitors, Your Grace,” Lady Dorothea whispered urgently, attempting to slow his progress. “I only wanted to convince you to let me study Artemisia’s paintings.”
Matrons whispered in huddled knots, gentlemen circled like sharks scenting fresh blood, and young ladies shot envious glances.
“This will ruin everything.” Her fingers tightened around his arm. “This is . . . this is my idea of hell. You must do something to show them you were only toying with me. You can tell your friends you only danced with me because of a wager.”
Lady Desmond’s light blue eyes blazed with triumph. “Your Grace.” She inclined her head regally.
Dalton made a peremptory bow.
He leaned close to Lady Dorothea, steeling himself against the seductive sharp-sweet scent of wild roses.
“Welcome to hell,” he whispered.
Chapter 2
The doorway to hell was covered in green baize and always stood at the end of a narrow passage.
Inside, hollow death rattle of dice, scrape of wood raking wool, agonized shouts and keen-edged laughter. The most exclusive club and the lowest hell sounded the same.
There were countless gaming establishments in London. Some folded and others sprang up almost nightly. Dalton knew the location and stakes of every one.
It was his duty to know, as it was his duty to record the names of every patron—aristocrat, churchman, magistrate, or fishmonger—who sought the green door and craved what lay beyond.
As the Duke of Osborne he had access to the exclusive private clubs, where he gambled away his late father’s cursed fortune and gathered information in secret.
But tonight he was cloaked in invisibility. Hair dulled with soot. A ragged neck cloth that doubled as a mask if pulled over his chin. Threadbare coat.
He’d learned to hunch his shoulders. Amble with the diffident gait of a dog who’d been kicked as a pup.
If he spoke at all this evening, he’d used the same lilting Irish brogue as his manservant, Conall.
They made a disreputable pair of prowlers, Dalton and Con, lurking in a darkened doorway that commanded an unobstructed view of the Crimson gaming hell in Piccadilly, so they’d be able to see their target, Lord Trent, exit before he saw them.
They waited in silence.
Dalton stamped his feet in the cold air. Winter hadn’t quite decided to yield to spring yet.
Con kicked at the doorjamb. “Enjoy yourself at the ball, did you?”
Dalton made a noncommittal noise.
“Saw you dancing with that wisp of a lady. Not your usual sort,” Con observed.
No, she wasn’t.
Dalton preferred statuesque, worldly widows and disenchanted wives with voluptuous curves made for hard bedding.
Lady Dorothea was petite, innocent, and completely off-limits in the bedding department.
“She’s the one who wrote me all those letters about the paintings at Balfry House. The same one who tried to snare Harland. She won’t be plaguing me anymore, though.”
“And why’s that?”
“I very cleverly danced with her in order to make her popular.”
Con snorted. “Clever plan, eh? Sure and you didn’t just want to have her in your arms?”
“Absolutely not. It was a clever plan. She’ll be beating away suitors now.”
The Duke of Foxford had claimed her for the next dance. The sight of the aged peer touching her had wrenched Dalton’s gut with revulsion.
Foxford’s grasping fingers were clenched around the throat of some of the most corrupt establishments in London. Gaming hells. Brothels. Gin houses.
Guilt twinged as Dalton remembered the dazed expression on her face as Foxford claimed her hand. She’d appeared genuinely horrified by the stampeding herd of gentlemen.
Not his vexation anymore.
An entry in a betting book, that’s all she meant to him now.
The Duke of Osborne wagers five hundred pounds that Lady Dorothea Beaumont will have ten proposals of marriage within the fortnight.
Con’s boot thudded against rotting wood. “So you didn’t enjoy dancing with the little lady, then?”
The scent of roses and the memory of soft sighs flooded Dalton’s mind. “No enjoyment whatsoever,” he lied. “A diversion tactic, nothing more.”
“Huh.” Truly a talent how Con was able to convey such disbelief and sarcasm with just one small syllable. “I used to save my dances for only one girl once upon a time. Not that you’ve ever asked.”
In all the years they’d been employer and employee, Dalton had never once heard Con mention his past. He hadn’t wanted to pry. He’d figured there was a reason the older man never spoke of Ireland, or his family there.
Con was . . . Con. Always there, like the rain and the wind. The man his father hired to protect him when he was a boy and later, when it became clear Dalton needed no protection, his only manservant, the only person Dalton trusted.
“Had eyes the color of freshly plowed sod, did Bronagh. Made a man consider becoming an honest farmer. Only one snag. She was promised to my elder brother Seamus.” He spat into the street. “Not even the tide would take him out, the cursed bastard.”
Dalton couldn’t see Con’s face clearly in the gloom, but he heard the uncharacteristic jag of emotion. “Is that why you accepted my father’s offer to leave Ireland?”
“Had to leave, or I would have killed my own brother and gone to the gallows and left Bronagh completely alone.” Con lapsed into silence for several minutes.
Dalton waited. He was good at waiting. Silence made people talk. He’d learned that trick from Con.
“Never did have the chance to say goodbye to brown-eyed Bronagh.” Con leaned back against the sidewall, staring across the street at the Crimson. “Heard Seamus died a year back,” he muttered.
“You should go home for a visit.” Dalton was careful to betray no emotion. He knew it would make Con uncomfortable.
“Ah, no.” Con tugged at his long gray-and-red-streaked beard. “Bronagh wouldn’t see me. Not after all these years. She thinks I abandoned her. Just look
at me. Gray hair. Bit of a paunch.” He snorted. “I’m not the handsome devil who left her that summer’s day, nearly twenty years ago.”
That may have been the longest collection of sentences Dalton had ever heard Con piece together. The man was given to laconic profanities, not confessions.
Dalton cocked his head. “I’ve seen prettier, and that’s a fact.”
“The point is that you’re not getting any younger, either.”
“You know I can never marry.”
There was always the threat of his secret identity being discovered. If that day came, a wife would become a target.
He jammed a hand through his hair. He had far graver problems on his mind than marriage.
Two young bloods sauntered up the street, inebriated and oblivious to danger. They could have their pockets picked out here on the streets of Piccadilly, or inside the gaming hell. But tonight Dalton couldn’t press his steel to their throats, warn them that if they beggared their families they’d not only answer to God, they’d answer to him.
The swells disappeared around the corner where Trent’s carriage was waiting. Only a matter of yards, but the coachman couldn’t see the entrance, he was huddled in his wool greatcoat, fast asleep.
Most nights, Dalton came to the gaming hells to save men from making mistakes that would devastate their families.
The gaming hell and gambling club owners hated him for it, seeking to unmask him and planting lies about him in the papers.
The penny papers and Grub Street scribblers had dubbed him the Hellhound. Writing fanciful stories of a marauding Irishman, come to London to avenge himself on the noblemen who stole his lands back in Ireland.
The broadsheets got one detail right, at least. He did hunt revenge and exact justice.
Revenge on the man who’d murdered his younger brother, Alec.
And justice for the powerless victims of the hypocrites and fiends who ruled the gambling world.
Pitiless, wealth-obsessed men like his own father, who’d owned a controlling interest in an exclusive gaming club. His father and his partners had ruined countless lives, stealing inheritances, leaving broken lives and destitute families in the wake of their endless thirst for power and wealth.
Alec had been killed to punish their father’s sins. He’d been pushed from a stone cliff in Ireland to his death in the ocean after Dalton left him there, unattended for only five minutes, when Dalton was ten and Alec only five.
His mother had been devastated by the death of her favorite son, her Irish Alec, with her auburn hair and leaf-green eyes, while Dalton had the bronze hair and blue-black eyes of her hated husband.
Until he turned eighteen, Dalton had thought his younger brother’s death was a tragic accident. That he’d slipped and fallen off that cliff. At Cambridge, Dalton had been the tragic poet, haunted by his brother’s fingers slipping from his grasp as he had pulled away.
Go back to the house, Alec. Don’t follow me.
Indulging in bad wine and even worse rhyming couplets.
His father put an abrupt end to that, spilling the dark secret one night when he was reeling from drink. Your brother didn’t fall into the bay, so you can stop writing that sentimental rot. Someone pushed him to spite me.
The words slurred by drink but the meaning clear as a funeral bell’s tolling. Then the old duke had shoved a list into Dalton’s hands. A list of the names of every corrupt, ruthless man the old duke had ever stolen wealth from, double-crossed, or betrayed.
So many names.
Lord Douglas Trent.
Circled twice.
“Taking his time, Trent,” Con muttered. “I’d like to be in bed right about now, with the covers turned up.”
“Not going soft on me, are you?”
Con sighed heavily. “I’m getting too old for this.”
Dalton had never heard him say that before. “Burns is the last name on the list, Con. If Trent doesn’t know where to find Burns, I won’t know where to search next.”
Anger boiled inside his chest. Ten years. Ten bloody years hunting the killer, crossing names off the list, and he was no closer than the first day.
Trent had successfully evaded Dalton, never staying in one city long enough to leave a warm trail. Dalton had long since ruled Trent out as the murderer . . . but he was also the only person who might possibly know the identity of the last name on the list: Daniel Burns.
Dalton had been searching for years and still hadn’t found a Burns who could have been associated with his father.
“Could be the man’s not on your father’s list,” said Con. “We’ll have to hammer at it from a different angle, that’s all.”
The door to the Crimson opened and Con jerked back into the shadows.
Dalton reacted with practiced fluidity, reaching Trent in a few strides and grabbing him by the collar. The baron fought the neck lock but Dalton pinched the bridge of his nose to close his air supply and dragged him toward the alley behind the club.
Con would keep watch on the mouth of the alley to make sure Dalton was undisturbed.
When it was dark and quiet enough, Dalton pushed Trent face-first against a brick wall, twisting his arm behind his back and holding a knife to the back of his neck.
“Who’s Daniel Burns?” he asked without preamble, using the broad Irish brogue he’d learned from Con.
He’d elicit the information and then decide what to do with the target. Sometimes he stripped their pockets of the evening’s winnings. Sent the funds back to the family of the desperate soul who’d gambled it away.
“Who’s asking?” Trent replied.
He attempted to twist free but Dalton held him easily. “None of your concern. Tell me who Burns is, or I’ll slit your throat, slow like.”
“Must be a lot of men named Burns,” Trent spat.
Dalton pressed his blade harder, the tip drawing a bead of blood.
“Easy now.” Trent stilled. “I used to know a Daniel Burns. Doorman at a brothel in Cheapside. Dead as a doornail for five years now. One of the fancy girls shot him with his own pepperbox. Flossy was her name. Toothsome little tart.”
Over the years, Dalton had learned to recognize the telltale signs when a man was lying. Trent’s words rang with the details of truth. Doorman? No wonder Dalton hadn’t found him. He’d been searching for someone powerful and wealthy.
His mind went bleak and cold.
The last name on his father’s list. Yet another dead end.
Only his years of training saved him from Trent’s sudden, powerful maneuver.
The hours spent drilling one thing over and over: hands up, head down.
Trent’s elbow caught his wrist and Dalton’s knife clattered to the cobblestones.
A flash of warmth. Wetness on his cheek.
Moonlight glinted on metal. Trent had a knife.
Dalton was cut.
Trent backed away. “That’s so I’ll know you the next time we meet, Hellhound,” he spat.
Dalton planted his back foot and exploded forward, his right hand firing a powerful straight punch.
Trent went down heavily, cracking his head on the cobblestones.
Dalton staggered against the wall, breathing heavily, shaken and wounded.
He hadn’t underestimated an opponent like that since he was a young pup just learning the rules of combat.
“That’ll leave a scar for sure,” Con grunted when he and Dalton were a safe distance away and headed home.
“Would have spurted my life out on the cobblestones if I hadn’t dodged. He was aiming for my jugular.”
Con’s huge hands curled into fists. “I should have gone with you.”
“This is my battle.”
“I’m your hired guard.”
“I hope so, because you’re a damned sorry excuse for a valet.”
Con gave an amused snort. “Ungrateful gobshite.”
Dalton grinned, wincing as pain forked across his jaw. It was one of their little rituals, the g
allows humor that kept Dalton from losing his mind.
They melted into the shadows, knowing which lanes to avoid. Changing the route every time. Keeping the pattern unpredictable.
The beasts among beasts.
Slouching and hugging the dark places.
As he sped toward home, Dalton’s thoughts turned to Lady Dorothea asleep in her maiden bed. Tomorrow’s penny papers would crown her this season’s Incomparable, a butterfly forced from her wallflower chrysalis.
He’d done her a favor.
Widened her prospects.
She deserved far better than the likes of him.
Not for him, the marigold silk of her hair.
The sweet summer scent of roses.
His, the cold that snarled and bit like a cornered wolf. Yawning doorways leading to dark gullets of rooms warm with stale breath and spilled gin and dark as the belly of a whale.
One miscalculation and a knife slid home.
Crawl home like a cur. Use the back stairs.
And try not to bleed on the carpet.
Fate had been very clear about one thing—whether lingering, or in one agonizing blow, love died.
Brothers drowned. Mothers faded into wraiths.
And melting blue-gray eyes couldn’t dull his pain any better than a bottle of brandy.
Chapter 3
Nothing can make me popular, Your Grace. Not even you.
Care to place a wager on that, Lady Dorothea?
Thea would have lost that wager. It was the morning after the ball and the Desmond town house was overrun with roses.
Great big bunches of hothouse roses. Pink, white, yellow, they clustered on every surface, crowing gleefully that after four seasons she was an overnight success.
All because of one waltz with an arrogant, manipulative duke.
He’d toyed with her as a lion taunted a lamb, rearranging her life to suit his whims. And she, knock-kneed creature, had succumbed to his velvety caress, heedless of the razor-sharp jaws waiting to rip apart her plans.
